Beyoncé is now a business school case study. The University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business will offer a new MBA course, “The Business of Beyoncé,” starting in January 2027, and registration filled fast after it opened this month. The course follows the singer’s career from childhood performances and Destiny’s Child to solo stardom and a set of business ventures, with the aim of preparing students for careers in entertainment, music management and branding.
The course was developed and will be taught by Shaun Harper, a professor who holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership at USC. Harper is a longtime fan of the singer, and he has written about her in Forbes and Inside Higher Ed. He previously served as editor-at-large of TIME magazine. The class will meet on Monday afternoons for nearly three hours. Registration opened this month, ahead of the January kickoff.
The course and the BeyEssay
Students will have to pick a favourite Beyoncé song and explain why before they study her whiskey brand, her hair-care line and her entertainment company, along with her music. The assignment has a fitting name: the “BeyEssay.” Students will unpack how she turns star power into a multimillion-dollar business and how social media shapes her brand.
The course covers the full arc of her career. It starts with her childhood performances, moves through Destiny’s Child and into her solo work, and then looks at the companies she built along the way. Students will also compare her with other actors and musicians who began performing as child stars, and with singers who moved from music groups to solo careers.
Beyoncé business ventures in class
Her business ventures stretch back more than two decades. In 2005, Beyoncé and her mother, Tina Knowles, launched House of Deréon, a clothing line that has since closed. She founded Parkwood Entertainment, her management and production company, in 2010, and co-founded the Ivy Park athleisure line, which debuted in 2016. In 2024, she introduced the Cécred hair-care brand and SirDavis whiskey with Moet Hennessy. She later bought out Moet Hennessy’s stake in the whiskey brand.
Cécred gives students a clear example of how she finances her companies. Her mother told Fortune that Beyoncé funded the company herself after prospective investors pushed for less spending on research and development and more on marketing. The course will use cases like that one to show how she has kept control of her work. The ventures give the course its case material, and each one shows a different way of turning fame into a company.
Beyoncé and the business of stardom
Harper expects some criticism of the course, and he has answered it in advance. He argues that students should learn practical skills, and says studying a pop star’s career is one way to teach them: the decisions behind a tour, a brand launch or a surprise album are business decisions, and they can be studied like any other. The singer’s career offers a long record of those decisions to work from.
Kendall Ferguson, 30, a second-year MBA student and president of USC’s Graduate Marketing Assn., is among those who signed up for the class. USC describes Beyoncé as the most-awarded artist in Grammy history. A spokesperson for the singer did not respond to a request from the Los Angeles Times for comment on the course. Harper designed the class to start from a career students already follow, and to turn that familiarity into a study of branding and ownership.
What students will take from the course
The class is offered through USC Marshall’s MBA program and starts in January 2027. It joins a small group of university courses built around a single pop star, and its fast fill rate suggests demand for that kind of teaching is strong. The students who signed up will spend the spring studying how Beyoncé built a business that reaches far beyond music.