(NewsNation) – Advertisers know that celebrities sell, but it might surprise some people to learn that so do college professors.
More and more colleges are turning to the personality cult to educate an increasingly sophisticated class of college “consumers.” Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and the Beatles have all been the subject of courses, and now Harry Styles joins the ranks.
Styles will be the subject of a class at Texas State University this fall. The professor who put the class together, Louie Dean Valencia, said the singer will help with the story.
“Really, the students are going to look at the last 12 years of the story because Harry Styles basically became famous,” Valencia said. “And for many of our students, who are maybe 18 years old, 12 years is a long time.”
Call it Celebrity 101. It was alive and well with the Beatles at Indiana University in the early 1980s, and today’s celebrities like the Kardashians teach many lessons.
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At the University of Nebraska, they are majors in an advertising and public relations course.
“[It’s]understanding influence, digital influence … and if we look at the Kardashians, they’ve managed to master media influence at every turn,” said course professor Kelli Britten. “They had the blogs, they had the paid apps, then they jumped to social media, and then, you know, they jumped into mainstream media with a TV show.”
America’s television family has students read from 13 different textbooks and 25 peer-reviewed articles. And not everyone is in class because they’re in love.
“I had one this semester that was, ‘Well, my girlfriend likes the Kardashians, so I thought I’d take the class,'” Britten said. “But they seem overwhelmingly positive in that area of ’I’ve learned so much because I know through this pop culture space.'”
Learning, whether it’s from Styles or Kim Kardashian and the gang, can inspire an understanding of art and history that can pay off down the line.
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