Where do billionaires go to university?
Select one of these universities if you harbour dreams of becoming a billionaire
Seeta Bhardwa
Share
Let’s face it, we all want to be billionaires. While your choice of university or course might not directly influence your chances of becoming a billionaire, it certainly could help.
An analysis of the top 250 billionaires from the latest Forbes Rich List explored where they went to university and the subjects that they studied.
However, interestingly it found that of the 196 people that had attended university (or where there was public information of their alma mater) 17 of them were dropouts.
Harvard University produced the highest number of billionaires with seven graduates in total.
Lund University in Sweden was the only non-US university to feature in the top five with four billionaires.
| Bachelor's college | Count of billionaires |
| Dropout | 17 |
| Harvard University | 7 |
| University of Pennsylvania | 6 |
| Yale University | 5 |
| Lund University | 4 |
| University of Michigan | 4 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 3 |
| Princeton University | 3 |
| University of Arkansas | 3 |
| University of Oxford | 2 |
| Stanford University | 2 |
| University of California, Berkeley | 2 |
| University of California, San Diego | 2 |
| London School of Economics and Political Science | 2 |
| Michigan State University | 2 |
| Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education | 2 |
| Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys | 2 |
| Moscow State Institute of International Relations | 2 |
| Seoul National University | 2 |
| Shenzhen University | 2 |
| Stanford University | 2 |
| University of Missouri | 2 |
| University of Mumbai | 2 |
| LMU Munich | 2 |
| UNSW Sydney | 2 |
| École Polytechnique | 2 |
| Karlsruhe Institute of Technology | 2 |
The analysis also looked at the subjects that the billionaires chose to study while at university.
Some 34 of the billionaires (with public information) had studied an engineering degree, while 27 has studied a business degree and 26 had studied an economics/finance degree.
The fourth most common degree subject was philosophy, with six billionaires taking the subject and law was the fifth most common degree subject.
| Degree | Count of billionaires |
| Engineering | 34 |
| Business | 27 |
| Economics and Finance | 26 |
| Philosophy | 6 |
| Law | 5 |
| Computer | 5 |
| Mathematics | 5 |
| Marketing | 3 |
| English | 3 |
| History | 2 |
| Medicine | 1 |
| Oriental Studies | 1 |
| Chemistry | 1 |
| Politics | 1 |
| Anthropology | 1 |
| Art | 1 |
| Textiles | 1 |
