With more than 53,000 University of Michigan students enrolled for the fall 2025 semester, the range of student employment opportunities varies for each individual. Depending on their field of study, interests and connections, students at the University turn to diverse work-study positions or self-employment opportunities on and off campus.
For students seeking positions on or off campus, the University’s Student Employment Office provides listings of Federal Work-Study and regular full- or part-time positions in and around Ann Arbor. In an email to The Michigan Daily, Sondra Fonville, SEO associate director of Strategic Initiatives & Partnerships, wrote how she supports students with jobs, citing research on the benefits of time-management skills and networking opportunities for employed students.
“Some research suggests that students who work a moderate number of hours each week often develop strong time management skills that may benefit them academically,” Fonville wrote. “They may also benefit from exposure to a variety of professional work environments.”
Outside of University job listings, Fonville also wrote the likelihood of encountering opportunities online is high due to increased engagement and connections.
“Social media does seem to equip students with easier pathways to find jobs, as it provides direct access to employers and listings, making it especially convenient for students to explore openings with just one click,” Fonville wrote.
Many students also seek self-employment or other forms of supplementary income, turning to opportunities that range from content creation to software engineering positions. Business junior Josie Stoffan is one of the many content creators online who are also college students. In an interview with The Daily, Stoffan said she began her social media career after posting her college essay on TikTok in a video that reached more than three million views.
“I first got into content creation honestly by accident,” Stoffan said. “I was just really bored during sorority rush freshman year and kind of lonely, so I just started posting random videos (and) posted my college essay, and it blew up.”
Stoffan said her platform grew due to viewers’ interest in content about student life at the University which allowed her to build a community and utilize social media as a creative outlet.
“I realized that people are really interested in college life, especially (the University) so ever since then, I’ve been posting like every single day,” Stoffan said. “(My platform) kind of built up, and I was like, ‘Okay, what if I can make money off of this, what if I can build a community, what if I can have a creative outlet?’ and I just kept going.”
Law School student Emily Cocea, another social media creator, creates adult content on social media and models for the men’s entertainment magazine, Playboy. In an interview with The Daily, Cocea said her growth began when she experimented with TikTok algorithms and amassed 60,000 followers.
“I started playing around with one account, and then I really quickly grew that to 60K followers which in hindsight is not that many, but it gave me a lot of confidence, and then I knew the way to make money off of social media,” Cocea said.
Cocea told The Daily she began her journey by using Patreon, a platform that allows her to make income from her following. Following this she ran multiple TikTok accounts to see which one would be the most successful.
“At the time it was mainly Patreon,” Cocea said. “I think intuitively, the purpose of social media, if that’s how you want to make your money, is just to bring people to that site. So, I started playing around with a couple different accounts that had different facets of my personality, either real or very gussied up, until I landed on the persona that I have now.”
Cocea said the benefit of social media jobs is flexibility, which she finds to be more practical for her work ethic and lifestyle.
“The nice thing about social media is that you set your own hours,” Cocea said. “Sometimes that can be a bad thing, because there’s no one to hold you accountable there, but I, for the most part, work best when I’m given a lot of freedom.”
Other students, such as Business sophomore Alonzo Wilson, channel their interests into entrepreneurship. Wilson runs his fashion visual branding business to help clothing brands develop recognizable imagery for their company.
In an interview with The Daily, Wilson said his passion for photography emerged after he received a camera for Christmas. His interests initially stemmed from YouTube content creation, which transformed into more photo-based content instead of video content.
“One Christmas, I was gifted a camera to me by my dad and I really wanted to be a YouTuber and I started making videos, but I realized I really wasn’t passionate about it,” Wilson said. “But I realized cameras can take photos too. I started doing birthday photoshoots, grad photoshoots, all celebrations, out of my mother’s home. From there I generated (about) $2,000 over the summer.”
As a business owner balancing coursework, Wilson said the experience has strengthened his leadership skills.
“I think one of the big things is leadership because I have no one holding me accountable when it comes to how my business is ran,” Wilson said. “It was very hard for me to be a self-starter while I was in class, being able to take initiative … but I really get to learn about business and school and that helps me give it to my business as well.”
Businesses that support secondhand retail have also grown in popularity due to the increasing trend in thrifting over the years. Thrifted University is among those businesses founded by students that recycle secondhand clothing from alumni for current students to buy at an affordable price. LSA senior Anna Canning, Thrifted University campus director, works with student ambassadors for event facilitation and coordination between student organizations.
In an interview with The Daily, Canning said she values the job’s ability to connect her with different people and be more involved on campus.
“You gain a lot of people skills, which are really transferable to any job,” Canning said. “I’m constantly meeting new people, but then we’ll have (bonding) events once every month, so you really get closer to the people over time.”
Daily Staff Reporter Kaelyn Sourya can be reached at ksourya@umich.edu. Daily News Contributor Reese Kizy can be reached at reesekiz@umich.edu.
