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| ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRIAN STAUFFER |
In the article “OnlyFans on Campus” that was published in the September 2025 issue of Town & Country, Ian Frisch profiled Shayna Loren - an advertising student at Boston University, “a highly selective, Top 50 institution that charges more than $91,000 per year”.
Here’s the article’s deck:
Remember when coeds made some extra cash stacking books at the library or working a shift at a restaurant? Now, with tuition skyrocketing and talk of entrepreneurship and fast and easy millions in the air, students—including those attending highly selective schools—are turning to a new line of work [OnlyFans] to pay the [high school and] college bills.
Frisch wrote that in Shayna’s Boston University (BU) public speaking class, Shayna, a BU Presidential Scholar, did a presentation titled “Influencing: The Perfect Way to Never Use Your College Degree”, where: “She spoke about the business she was running right now: content creation for social media, including OnlyFans.” Frisch wrote:
And then, Public Speaking, where [Shayna] Loren had to give a presentation about what she hoped her future career might be, and why it was a worthwhile pursuit.
When it was her turn to speak, [Shayna] Loren got up in front of the class and connected her laptop to the projector. Her presentation was called “Influencing: The Perfect Way to Never Use Your College Degree.” [Shayna] Loren wasn’t going to give a presentation about what she hoped to do after college. She spoke about the business she was running right now: content creation for social media, including OnlyFans, the subscription-based website that has become inextricably linked to adult content.
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| ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRIAN STAUFFER |
Shayna shared with her professor and classmates that she has made: “[...] more than $1.1 million in earnings over the past three years—after OnlyFans took its 20 percent cut.”
If you did the math correctly, you would have come to the conclusion that Shayna was 18 and a high school student when she began posting adult content (e.g., topless) on OnlyFans. Unsurprisingly, Shayna made a whopping $50,000 during her second month on OnlyFans. Frisch wrote:
[Shayna] Loren, 21 and starting her senior year this month, has been doing OnlyFans since her senior year of high school. Loren, 21 and starting her senior year this month, has been doing OnlyFans since her senior year of high school. A natural entrepreneur (she previously ran her own handmade soap company), she saw the sums of money that could be made through online content—especially if she was willing to go topless [...] “My second month on OnlyFans, I made $50,000,” she says. “At that point I couldn’t stop.”
“I’m comfortable showing, like, my boobs,” she says.
Understandably, Shayna’s parents, “her mother is a doctor, her father a marketing entrepreneur”, could not cover the over $91,000 BU tuition; however, that was not a problem, because by Shayna’s sophomore year: “Her OnlyFans income could cover it.”
Of course, Shayna isn’t the first coed to make adult content to pay for college. Frisch reminded us about Belle Knox, whom became a teen porn star when she was an 18-year-old freshman Blue Devil, and Maya Moren, whom pays for her healthcare degree with her OnlyFans earnings . Frisch wrote:
Turning to adult entertainment to help pay for college isn’t a new thing; Duke University student Belle Knox became a national phenomenon in 2014 for doing porn as a way to avoid student loans.
For [Shayna] Loren and some students like her, OnlyFans has become a 21st-century gold rush, a get-rich-quick scheme in the internet age that can provide relief from college’s skyrocketing cost. “And it’s not just school. It’s books, a computer, room and board—all those other things you need,” says Maya Morena, who is pursuing a healthcare degree on the East Coast. “I pay for all of it from doing OnlyFans.
Strategically, Shayna uses the allure of sexualized college girls, and “plays up her college girl persona, which has become a core element of her brand” to get money from her “71,300 OnlyFans subscribers.” Shayna shared with Frisch:
“My followers are superengaged with my everyday life, so showing that side of my college experience is very valuable.”
In the end, Frisch posed some interesting rhetorical questions about whether or not Shayna is engaged in (teen) prostitution:
Is selling topless photos on OnlyFans a form of prostitution? [...] Is it pornography if it’s self-produced? There are no easy answers to these questions. Still, the highly subjective nature of what constitutes pornography or sex work allows individual creators to formulate their own definitions of how they monetize their bodies.
Unconvincingly, Shayna opined that her OnlyFans adult content is not pornography but is simply (nude) modeling. Frisch wrote:
Loren, for example, considers the content she posts on OnlyFans more akin to modeling (à la Playboy, for which she has previously posed) rather than pornography.