On the Thursday, August 20, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast:
Content creation has become a sought-after career path. Now, Arizona State University is launching a Bachelor of Arts in content creation. What does this say about the future of higher education and digital work? Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Practice in Journalism & Mass Communication at Arizona State University Jessica Pucci explains why now is the right time to offer this degree.Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Gen Zers are aspiring to a career choice that didn't even exist a couple of decades ago, content creator. But what's the surest path to success? For some, it's simply turning on their phone, hitting record and uploading to TikTok or YouTube. But for those who want a more traditional path, Arizona State is rolling out a new degree, a Bachelor of Arts in content creation. What gaps will this degree fill and will other universities follow suit?
Hello, and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, August 20, 2026. Joining me to discuss ASU's new degree program is Arizona State University Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Practice Journalism and Mass Communications Jessica Pucci. It's so good to have you here, Jessica.
Jessica Pucci:
Thanks so much for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Jessica, what's changed over the last few years that made ASU decide that content creation deserves a degree and to be approached as more of a career than a potential side hustle?
Jessica Pucci:
Oh gosh, what hasn't changed? The media industry is constantly changing and it's always been changing and ASU has always been responsive to that. But I think what we're seeing now is so many of our students who were in journalism programs or in our sports journalism program or who were pursuing PR or careers with athletic teams, they were seeing the value in content creation. They themselves were becoming tremendous content creators. And so we heard from students that not only do they want to develop those skills and also develop the audiences that they could take with them to their jobs and use to build their networks with, but they also desire to have a career that they control themselves. So some of our students don't want to go to work for somebody else. They want to work for themselves, and content creation offers an awesome opportunity for them to do just that.
Dana Taylor:
Creators like Marques Brownlee, Cleo Abram, Codie Sanchez, they all built massive audiences without a program like this. What do you think they figured out through trial and error that will now be synthesized and taught within your program?
Jessica Pucci:
What I love about your question is that it gets at the very heart of why it's so important to not only earn a college degree, but to pursue a degree even while you're pursuing a career in content creation. People can absolutely do it through trial and error. You can learn lots of skills online. You can watch some videos, learn how to edit better, learn how to create better thumbnails. But what you don't get by trial and error is the faculty around you, the student support around you, and also all of the things that make a classic liberal arts education really worthwhile, which are perspectives that you didn't seek out on your own. It's again, the kind of group learning and the exposure to perspectives and cultures and people who you didn't choose yourself.
And so bringing students into the fold and not only encouraging them to share content together, but then to edit it together and refine it together and have expertise from multiple faculty who only really care about your success, that's what other creators don't have. We want our students to have the full benefit of having global experts, world-renowned scholars, and the very best creators in the universe all around to help each other, not to compete against each other.
Dana Taylor:
A lot of what separates the creators I mentioned from those who haven't broken through yet is that audiences trust them. How will you approach helping students achieve that level of trust?
Jessica Pucci:
Well, trust begins with accuracy, and that's why all of our content creation students, they still take courses in writing. They still take an entire course dedicated to information gathering. They'll take an entire course dedicated to media law. All of these things are so integral to building trust and trust is earned. None of the creators that you mentioned had instantaneous trust, but they earned it over time by being accurate, having just really well-refined content and strategic content. They also messed up along the way. I think all of those creators would say, "Man, I wish we would've done that thing differently," or, "Geez, I really learned from that series that I did." Our students are doing that in real time with the guidance and the safety net of having a faculty and a university community behind them.
Dana Taylor:
Jessica, as you know, AI has already had a significant impact on content creation. Does that change what students need to learn?
Jessica Pucci:
It's a great question. AI has absolutely disrupted journalism, media, the creator economy. I think it actually puts additional responsibility on universities to actually do the job and show up and ensure that the students who are earning degrees come out better than those who use AI alone. So at the Cronkite School, we have completely doubled down on writing, for example. Some people think, "Well, who needs to write in the age of AI?" Well, writing's a lot more than writing. Writing is connecting your brain to thought and the synthesis of that thought happens when you write. Being able to synthesize information quickly, accurately, effectively for different audiences takes a lot of time and a lot of skill. And I'm sure that when they invented the calculator, people thought, "Oh, well, we don't need math majors anymore." No, not at all. We actually just expect the math majors to do better math. And in that regard, we expect our Cronkite students to come out of here stronger writers than ever.
Dana Taylor:
Not every graduate is going to be the next MrBeast or industry leaders like Colin and Samir. How have you set realistic expectations in terms of reach as well as future earnings potential?
Jessica Pucci:
So all of our students are chasing big dreams, and we want to encourage that dream. At the same time, many other students go through their college education and then decide to pivot, and we support that too. And what I'm most proud of about this degree and all of our degrees is that you can absolutely take these skills and this knowledge and push yourself to be a successful content creator. You can also take these same skills and pivot them to so many different industries. Every industry needs effective communicators. Every industry needs people who are able to step into a room and ask good questions. Every industry needs people who can look at data, draw inferences from it, and act upon it. These are actually highly transferable skills. And we see students do this all of the time, their journalism degrees and their mass communication and media studies degrees.
I also think we have to look critically about what success looks like. We have entire assignments that are like, "Pick the goal, but it can't be a follower count." That's not what it's about. True, really successful content creators get successful not by the number of views or the number of followers that they have, but the level of engagement that they have with their audiences. A creator that has a relatively small following, but is able to more effectively convert their followers to action is oftentimes a more successful creator than people who have millions of followers, but who have relatively low connectivity to their audience. So we are not chasing numbers here. We are focused solely on, again, accuracy, truth, engagement, and building community around content, not necessarily quantity over quality.
Dana Taylor:
Platforms and algorithms change constantly, and those are just the ones we know and use today. What went into building a curriculum that won't expire when the next world-changing app is launched?
Jessica Pucci:
Yes. Tools are always changing. Algorithms are always switching up. We learned long ago not to base our instruction on specific tools and click this button here, push that button there. It doesn't work. And again, you can learn that from a YouTube video. We actually are training students to learn how to do that for themselves. We want to create students who are able to plop into any situation, any newsroom, any agency, work with any brand, and immediately have the confidence to be able to say, "I'm new here. I don't know this system. I don't know this brand, but I can figure it out." And so we're nurturing the skills of independence and confidence. And that comes from a lot of practice in the same basics that probably you and I learned in college. Again, that's writing, that's critical thinking, data analysis. The values that Walter Cronkite himself held so highly, those things don't change, or at least they shouldn't.
Dana Taylor:
And finally, Jessica, some people may roll their eyes at the thought of this degree being offered at a university level. What do you hope the first graduating classes prove about where this field is headed?
Jessica Pucci:
Well, gosh, I hope they prove all the naysayers wrong. I think that our graduates will be just supremely prepared to not only create content and exercise their media production skills across the internet, but I actually think that these students will be more highly connected in this increasingly isolating world than anybody else because they will have done it purposely, meaningfully, and with an entire university behind them. So many students, and right outside my window, I have a bunch of students moving into a residence hall and getting ready for their first day of college and it's still a really scary time, and it's even scarier in a time when many of us are, again, really separated and isolated. And I think that by really directing students to make meaningful connections in the world, they're going to come out stronger than ever.
Dana Taylor:
Jessica, thank you so much for joining me to talk about this program.
Jessica Pucci:
Thank you so much for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Make The Excerpt part of your weekday routine. New episodes are available every weekday morning.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Is content creation worth the cost of a college degree? | The Excerpt
