Why Fashion’s Next Generation Is Rethinking College

Miranda McKeon, a 24-year-old content creator, has complicated feelings about the value of a college education.

“I do not — and, I believe, I will never — need a degree, as in the piece of paper, to be doing what I’m doing,” she told The Business of Fashion.

But McKeon does actually have that piece of paper, having graduated from the University of Southern California in 2025 with a bachelor’s degree in communications and entrepreneurship.

“I’m such a strong believer that one of the best things anyone can do for themselves is get a college education,” she continued. “It changes your belief system. It challenges you to critically think about things.”

In February, McKeon — who has nearly 450,000 followers on TikTok — participated in a creator-led campaign for Campus, a for-profit online college that pitches itself as a cheaper, nontraditional alternative to traditional degrees. The campaign featured creators discussing their own experiences with college, including why it didn’t work for some of them. College is still widely seen as a space for intellectual and personal development. But many young people believe it no longer guarantees — or even clearly accelerates — access to some of fashion’s most attractive opportunities.

With the total cost of a four-year degree now routinely exceeding $100,000 — often far more — the financial stakes have risen sharply, just as the payoff has become less predictable, particularly for graduates entering fields like marketing, communications, merchandising, retail and other early-career corporate roles.

Unemployment among 23- to 27-year-olds has edged up from the unusually tight post-pandemic labour market, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the same time, US student debt is nearing $2 trillion, leading many to question higher education’s return on investment. The speed at which required skills are evolving (think: artificial intelligence) — is also forcing a broader recalibration.

Of course, many of fashion’s most stable and highest-paid roles — from supply chain and technical design to executive leadership — still typically require formal credentials. Opting out of a degree and betting norms will change when it comes time to hit the job market is its own kind of risk.

For Gen Z, the issue isn’t quite whether to go to college, but what role it should play — which education leads to which outcomes and what elements of the experience justify the cost.

“Higher education in fashion is not an obsolete topic – it’s still very valid,” said Yvonne Pengue, founder and director of London-based executive search firm Spot on Minds. “But [the onus] is not on one [entity]. It’s the companies, the students, the universities who need to work together … to generate employable new graduates.”

The New Degree Math

Young adults figuring out how higher education fits into their career path isn’t a new phenomenon. The usual starting point is still to work backwards: Define the job you want, or at least core interests — and map the education required to get there.

“If there’s certain things that you find particularly interesting, or you’re curious about, do your research,” said Lauren Lotka, founder and chief executive of executive search and talent consultancy Lotka & Co. “Do most chief marketing officers or CEOs have MBAs? Then it’s something for you to seriously consider if that’s the path you want to be on.”

Schools like Savannah College of Art and Design, Fashion Institute of Technology and Central Saint Martins remain core talent pipelines for major design houses, and their names still carry weight on a resumé.

For aspiring designers and others in relationship-driven roles like editorial, PR, styling and merchandising, the alumni network alone can justify much of the cost of a degree. For others, shorter and more targeted options — two-year programmes or industry certifications from organisations like the National Retail Federation — can provide the credibility and access needed to break into fields like branding, PR, sales and social media.

At Campus, the second most popular stated career interest among incoming students is “fashion and the arts,” according to vice president of marketing Mark Mashaw.

But, for those who opt out of higher ed completely, there is still a very real trade-off: Without the institutional stamp, candidates have to build the resumé in other ways — through portfolios, work experience, digital fluency or a proven point of view.

McKeon’s career as a content creator began to take off while she was still a sophomore at USC, when she started using social media to talk through and process a cancer diagnosis. Virality and brand deals soon followed. McKeon, who also acted in the Netflix series “Anne with an E,” said her extracurricular experience clarified what she wanted to use her degree to do.

Nordstrom and Roxy aren’t asking to see McKeon’s diploma before they ink a partnership. But studying communications sharpens how she produces her content, shows up for public speaking and communicates with her audience, while entrepreneurship gives her the operational and financial fluency to scale her platform.

“I don’t need a degree to become an actress, but I will need a degree if I want to join the VC world, or join a startup,” said McKeon. “Most of what I do is sharing my own thoughts and opinions on the internet, and I think I would have been canceled like 10 times over if I didn’t have my college education.”

The Other Side of the Equation

At most fashion companies hiring for corporate roles, a college degree is likely to remain table stakes experts say. But as AI reshapes work, employers are placing greater weight on critical thinking, communication and real-world experience.

That could open the door to candidates with unconventional educational backgrounds, some experts predict.

“It’s experimenting with different formats of how they’re hiring entry-level talent — we’ve seen TikTok interviews or video interviews or allowing [candidates] to pitch themselves,” said Yae. “So maybe you have a two-year degree from a junior college or an associate’s degree, but you’re able to pitch yourself and show all of your other attributes.”

Higher (or shifting) standards should also force a more practical look at recruitment economics. Requiring a $100,000 degree for an entry-level role that pays $45,000 is becoming harder to defend — particularly with a generation trained to weigh return on investment.

Colleges face a parallel challenge: making that return easier to see. That means keeping pace with tools like AI, embedding more practical training and strengthening the pipeline into corporate roles, while still delivering the less tangible benefits — critical thinking, problem solving and networks — that have long been part of their value proposition.

“Gen Z is very focused on the ROI and they are very focused on the career outcomes,” said Mashaw. “At the same time, traditional higher ed has often been a little too divorced from those career and job outcomes and the skills that are needed.”

The path forward requires all three parts of the equation to move in tandem, said Pengue — even as the heaviest burden still falls on students to build the skills, experience and point of view that make them competitive.

“You have to be determined,” Pengue said. “You really need to want it and you put effort towards it — it’s demonstrating what one can bring to the business … the financial literacy, digital fluency. There is no excuse.”