"Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary is walking back his long‑held view that engineering is the only graduate degree worth pursuing, saying in a new social media post that the biggest paydays in 2025 are going to elite content creators.
O'Leary Says Storytellers Now Win The Wage Race
The investor, long known for steering students toward engineering and other STEM fields as the surest route to high salaries, now says creative "storytellers" who can drive online sales are winning the wage race.
In an X post on Wednesday, O'Leary wrote, "Ten years ago I said engineering was the only master's degree worth pursuing. Not anymore. The fastest wage growth today is in creative storytelling across social media, people who can lower customer acquisition costs and increase ROAS every single week.”
"Those creators aren't making $25K… they're making $250K or $800K across multiple companies. Why? Because they're measurable. Content is king, and the storytellers are winning," he added.
Engineering Evangelist To Content-Creation Champion
The comments mark a notable shift from a 2018 CNBC interview in which O'Leary urged students to pick engineering as the top three choices for a lucrative career, arguing it offered the highest odds of landing a well‑paid job. O’Leary, back then, praised engineering cohorts for spinning patents into companies, holding them up as prime examples of turning technical training into entrepreneurship.
In a separate talk with business audiences on YouTuber Evan Carmichael’s podcast in 2020, however, O’Leary claimed that his opinion on college degrees has now changed. O'Leary's went on to reveal social media content as the fastest‑growing cost center across his portfolio of more than 50 companies.
Every Business Needs An In-House Media Machine
Over the past couple of years, the ‘Shark Tank’ investor has doubled down on his renewed view and argued that every business now needs an in‑house media operation to tell its story online and lower customer acquisition costs through targeted campaigns.
At the same time, O'Leary has been skeptical about traditional postgraduate business education, saying the main value of an MBA is the network and work ethic rather than the credential itself.
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