Live-streaming host is a most sought-after job for more and more Chinese college students.
Though the new profession is not well accepted by society, especially by parents, nowadays it is not rare to see college students hosting online broadcasts.
A junior student from Tsinghua University has earned at least 10,000 yuan (close to $1,500) since she started teaching high school students on a major live-streaming platform a month ago. In fact, this is a common story for a great number of Chinese college students.
Huajiao is the first Chinese live-streaming platform that offers a "college channel." According to the site, more than a million college students from 98.7% of the country's universities are using the platform to host shows. More than 10,000 of them are students from elite universities, 1,000 of whom are studying at Tsinghua University and Peking University, China's top two schools.
College students have improved people's impression on the profession. Rather than low-quality and vulgar performances, they are providing shows with more intelligence and talents.
Flexible working hours and high income are the major reasons for students to choose the emerging profession. Statistics show that the average monthly salary of college broadcasters on the platform of Huajiao is 16,000 yuan. Some earn as much as 1.9 million yuan a month, 275 times of the 2016 average monthly salary of white collar workers in Beijing.
A survey conducted by Communication University of China found that a quarter of China's college students have hosted shows on live-streaming sites.
With further development of the industry, there will be more and more college students taking up the profession.
