Top 20 Colleges With Most Billionaire Alumni

Slideshow November 05, 2014 at 05:54 AM
Share & Print

You don't have to have a college degree to become a billionaire. In fact, 35% of the world's billionaires don't have a bachelor's degree — or in some cases, even a high school diploma, according to the latest billionaire census published by UBS and Wealth-X.

Still, the majority of billionaires have a bachelor's degree, and of those 26% have a master's degree, 21% an MBA and 11% a doctorate.

According to the census, the U.S. has a disproportionate number of the top 20 schools where billionaires obtained their bachelor's degree.

This isn't just because the U.S. is the country with the largest number of billionaires. According to UBS and Wealth-X, more than a quarter of nascent billionaires who received their undergraduate degree from American institutions were born outside the U.S.

And beyond the bachelor's degree, some 39% of students who attended the top American schools for postgraduate studies were born outside the U.S.

"It is apparent that these institutions top the ranking not just because of the United States' large number of billionaires, but also because they have strong international reputations, which attract students from around the globe," the report said.

The schools on the top 20 list all have international reputations for excellence. However, only 16% of the world's "educated" billionaires attended these institutions, the census report noted; 84% did not.

It pointed out that today's billionaires received their bachelor's degrees from more than 700 different universities around the world.

(If you aren't a billionaire and need to work for a living, check out Top 10 Best Paying Jobs: 2014).

Following are the top 20 schools whose undergraduate programs have the most billionaire alumni:

ETH Zurich (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

20. ETH Zürich/Switzerland

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 6

 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Photo: AP)

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 7

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 8

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 8

Duke fans cheering basketball team. (Photo: AP)

16. Duke University/U.S.

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 9

Washington Square Park Arch. (Photo: AP)

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 9

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 10

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 10

Texas A&M University Student Rec Center. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 10

Lomonosov Moscow State University. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 11

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 11

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 12

Sather Gate on the University of California Berkeley campus. (Photos: AP)

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 12

Students in front of Stanford Chapel on the Stanford University campus. (Photo: AP)

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 14

McGraw Hall on the campus of Cornell University. (Photo: AP)

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 14

Princeton University Campus (Photo: AP)

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 14

Students gather for a workout on the University of Southern California campus. (Photo: AP)

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 16

Yale Coat of Arms.

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 20

Kirkland House on the campus of Harvard University. (Photo: AP)

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 22

Students parade through the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. (Photos: AP)

Billionaire undergraduate alumni: 25

NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Related Stories

Resource Center