Arizona seems like something a californian high on schrooms and lost in the desert made up.

I made the mistake of going to art school thinking it was actually about the art. This sounds closer to what they were actually trying to teach (poorly).

Also telephone sanitation engineers and hairdressers.

degree that provides little value to society. Surely worth mom and dad siphoning the savings or taking out debt to develop those narcissism skills.

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

-- Goodhart's law

You can bet that there will be special offers to buy followers in Arizona. Also students will make deals to follow each other and test how many accounts they can create themselves without the social networks noticing.

That is, do they have a social media account with at least 50,000 followers?

Social media influencing is "Marketing". Marketing is an area of theoretical study. A university should be offering degrees in 'bigger picture' areas of expertise that one can take an apply. This is not at all to suggest that academic institutions of that type should not offer, even require course that do focus on a practical application like social media influencing. Because the ability to take the lofty concepts and applying them in practical way is part of being an expert in any given area.

You get a degree in mechanical or possibly 'Automotive' engineering if you want to go to work ultimately designing engines; you absolutely would be doing a good deal of course work that focus on small gasoline powered internal combustion power plants, but your overall area of study is still broader.

Universities need to get smarter about how to track trends and meet immediate labor market needs without spinning up entirely new programs, that are so narrow they face a real possibility of not making any real sense at less than a decade or two down the line. This kind of thing is why the public gets a dim view of education and why more and more people look at the ROI of these degrees and go "nope" even though the analysis might be wrong (after all they haven't had the freshman stats course yet). They see a chart showing how going to work earlier and chasing compound interest with with lower wages beats school and higher wages later on average but forget about the fact that people with 'social media influence degrees" who also end up making coffee pull down the average. Actually getting a degree in mechanical engineering, economics, medical etc, usually will pay off.

In so many ways, I don't follow this.

How long until a student chooses OnlyFans as their platform?

"Students will be given classes in economics, banking, getting loans and registering businesses selling widgets. To graduate, students must show that their business made a profit."

WTF people?

One must ask: why would anyone want to be "influenced" in the first place?

Arizona State? I thought Streamer University is currently happening at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas!?

Streamer University - Wikipedia [1]https://share.google/krqmS3VhP... [share.google]

[1] https://share.google/krqmS3VhPc1ASZw2T

He/she will mysteriously disappear, because people that can manipulate the masses this well are needed elsewhere

The headline should be "Arizona State University Offers BA in Narcissism"

I remember when they were a school that wasn't a fucking joke - my father got an accounting degree and a CPA from ASU as his second bachelor's.

Do you think students would sign up if we called it what it is? "Learn how to be the next Billy Mays!" p It should at least be under the business school. Unless they're looking to generate green power with Cronkite's spinning corpse.

...had a wonderful solution for people like these.

I find it difficult to believe that 'influencers' are a good sign at a society level; but I'm a little puzzled by the degree of hostility to what is basically a degree for self-employed PR/marketing people.

As much as I'm not happy about it, PR and marketing are absolutely entire fields; and I'd assume that people doing those things whose client is themselves would also benefit from a dash of entertainment related law; contracts and accounting related to dealing with sponsor agreements; and the same sort

I mean I get all of this but one thing that I rather disliked about PhD's is the idea that someone is becoming an expert on a topic, by showing that they can advance the topic with a new idea. Sure the idea is the degree leads you to a research company where you need to continue creating new ideas, or a teaching position where you aren't expected to just teach, but continue advancing research but... If we want most of our advanced teachers to hold PhDs to prove they are experts on a topic, why don't we hav

It's called marketing. Sorry to burst everyone's bubble, influencers don't acquire followers because they're so amazing and people just flock to them. They acquire followers because they engage in good old fashioned...marketing. They literally pay marketers money to get them into your feed.

That gizmo they just discovered and think is amazing? Yeah, they're getting paid to promote it. That restaurant or destination they are gushing about? Yeah, they're getting paid for that too. They work very hard to appear

Remove how silly it sounds from the get-go. It's an evolution of marketing and PR. It should be a specialty or certificate; anyone successful won't stick around for 120 credits. New platforms will be created and fall within the 4 years of required classes.

Every story I've seen about this new degree has made the same mistake: calling it an "influencer degree". It's for content creation, not influencing. The latter is a subset of the former, but content creation is not specifically influencing.

On the other hand, nothing tends to turn people off on subjects more than having to take classes on it, so I say go for it!

I will be offering a Degree in Moderation, get every single student in this program to be blocked by every social media platform before they complete their term.

> For the program's final project, students will choose a social media platform, such as TikTok, create a content and growth strategy, and attempt to gain real followers throughout the semester. "They will have demonstrable audience growth,"

So they start with their Mom as a follower and by the end of the year they have about as many followers as are enrolled in the same course

Requires no education, just "vibes". All you have to do is read from a corporate script, and be open to being exploited by having no say in which companies you choose to represent until you strike it big. Success is absolutely not guaranteed, competition is fierce and simply by being highly visible on socials you become a target for weirdos. Sounds like hell to me.