Where do the world’s top CEOs go to university?

Here’s where you should go to college if you want to be big in the business world

January 18 2017

Choosing a university is far from easy – with so many places to go and courses to study, picking the right one is a minefield. But what if you based your decision according to where the CEOs of the world’s most successful companies spent their college days?

Times Higher Education has found out which universities were home to the top business men and women of 2017. The Alma Mater Index 2017 (“alma mater” being Latin for “nourishing mother”) ranks universities according to how many qualifications they have awarded to chief executives of companies that feature in Fortune magazine’s Fortune Global 500. This list is a compilation of the world’s 500 largest companies by revenue, whose earnings in 2015 totalled $27.6 trillion (£22.3 trillion).

From the survey, it appears that having a degree from a world-leading university is the way to go for a stronger chance of a career in a business powerhouse. It also seems that domestically educated chief executives are preferred at the helm of an organisation: almost two-thirds of the companies on the Fortune Global 500 list are run by chief executives who have a degree from the country where the company is based.

Information on the education of chief executives was researched using biographies, company websites, press releases, industry association websites, conference speaker biographies and news sources. Where a chief executive has qualifications from more than one university (including undergraduate and master’s degrees, doctorates and other postgraduate qualifications) the companies’ revenues are attributed to each university that has awarded their chief executive a degree.

The index is limited by the public availability of information, and it was not able to find details on all individuals’ educational history. Nonetheless, the results give an insight into the academic background of the business elite.

Top five universities that have educated the most global business leaders

Harvard University

Harvard Business School in Massachusetts enrolled 936 students on its two-year MBA course in 2016. It has an impressive research department and catalogue of published work, including Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal, written by Professor Eugene Soltes.

Harvard has awarded 29 qualifications to 26 chief executives of companies with a combined 2015 revenue of more than $1.4 trillion.

Stanford University

In 2015, Stanford had its 125th anniversary. Stanford’s Graduate School of Business offers a two-year MBA programme and a one-year MSx management programme along with several other course options.

Notable alumni in business include the founders of Google (Sergey Brin and Larry Page), the head of Netflix (Reed Hastings) and the co-founder of Nike (Phil Knight).

Stanford awarded 14 degrees to 12 chief executives of companies worth a total of $729 billion.

HEC Paris

HEC Paris is a business school that claims in its mission statement to be “training the global leaders of tomorrow”.

Focused on nurturing close connections to the corporate world, HEC Paris has an impressive alumni network including the CEOs of L’Oréal, EDF and Allianz France. It offers a master’s in management, an MBA and a summer school for recent graduates looking to sharpen their business acumen.

HEC Paris awarded 12 degrees to 12 chief executives running companies with total revenues of $516 billion.

École Polytechnique

École Polytechnique is a science-focused institution, boasting one of the world’s best engineering schools. Renowned for its 20-laboratory-strong research centre, it says that innovation in the sciences and economics is the key to its success.

The university educated 11 chief executives and awarded 11 degrees, but their companies generated more revenue than Stanford’s alumni, with a total 2015 revenue of more than $840 billion.

Cornell University

Situated in New York, Cornell University and its College of Arts and Sciences offers a wide range of undergraduate courses, ranging from medieval studies to game design.

Cornell awarded 10 degrees to seven chief executives, whose companies had a total revenue of $547 billion.

The Alma Mater Index 2017 top 100

Rank	Rank in THE World University Rankings 2016-17	University	Country
1	6	Harvard University	United States
2	3	Stanford University	United States
3	NR	HEC Paris	France
4	116	École Polytechnique	France
5	19	Cornell University	United States
6	13	University of Pennsylvania	United States
7	401-500	Wuhan University	China
8	10	University of Chicago	United States
9	5	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	United States
10	251-300	Mines ParisTech	France
11	NR	ENA, École Nationale d’Administration	France
12	91	Kyoto University	Japan
13	NR	Insead	France
14	1	University of Oxford	United Kingdom
15	170	University of Cologne	Germany
16	39	University of Tokyo	Japan
17	201-250	University of Stuttgart	Germany
18	32	New York University	United States
19	20	Northwestern University	United States
20	4	University of Cambridge	United Kingdom
21	72	Seoul National University	South Korea
22	112	University of Göttingen	Germany
23	=36*	University of Illinois	United States
24	16	Columbia University	United States
25	201-250	Polytechnic University of Milan	Italy
26	NR	China Europe International Business School	China
27	NR	Shandong University	China
28	601-800	Tokyo University of Science	Japan
29	8	Imperial College London	United Kingdom
30	35	Tsinghua University	China
31	NR	Nankai University	China
32	45*	University of Wisconsin	United States
33	195	National Taiwan University	Taiwan
34	18	Duke University	United States
35	601-800	China University of Petroleum (Beijing)	China
36	=80*	University of Pittsburgh	United States
37	601-800	Auburn University	United States
38	60	University of Southern California	United States
39	NR	Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications	China
40	56*	University of North Carolina	United States
41	30	LMU Munich	Germany
42	169*	Texas A&M University	United States
43	33	University of Melbourne	Australia
44	351-400	Hanyang University	South Korea
45	14	University of California, Los Angeles	United States
46	7	Princeton University	United States
47	21*	University of Michigan	United States
48	601-800	Waseda University	Japan
49	12	Yale University	United States
50	NR	Sciences Po	France
51	113	University of Bonn	Germany
52	78	RWTH Aachen University	Germany
53	601-800	Keio University	Japan
54	182	University of the Witwatersrand	South Africa
55	301-350	University of Kent	United Kingdom
56	251-300	University of São Paulo	Brazil
57	801+	Southwest Jiaotong University	China
58	501-600	Harbin Institute of Technology	China
59	NR	Harbin Engineering University	China
60	9	ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich	Switzerland
61	29	Peking University	China
61	NR	Dongbei University of Finance and Economics	China
63	82	Technical University of Berlin	Germany
64	NR	Babson College	United States
65	59	Delft University of Technology	Netherlands
66	51	Brown University	United States
67	401-500	San Diego State University	United States
68	141*	Rutgers University	United States
69	501-600	Xi’an Jiaotong University	China
70	143	University of Notre Dame	United States
71	NR	Hefei University of Technology	China
72	351-400	Iowa State University	United States
73	10	University of California, Berkeley	United States
74	68	Pennsylvania State University	United States
75	351-400	University of Houston	United States
76	121	University of Virginia	United States
77	251-300	Sapienza University of Rome	Italy
78	601-800	University of Science and Technology Beijing	China
79	251-300	Osaka University	Japan
80	NR	École Centrale Paris	France
81	70*	Purdue University	United States
82	198	Tilburg University	Netherlands
83	401-500	Huazhong University of Science and Technology	China
84	501-600	Complutense University of Madrid	Spain
85	NR	Bowdoin College	United States
86	201-250	University of Cincinnati	United States
87	201-250	Shanghai Jiao Tong University	China
88	NR	Essec Business School	France
89	165	University of Auckland	New Zealand
90	201-250	Boston College	United States
91	401-500	Lehigh University	United States
92	42	McGill University	Canada
93	173	University of Waterloo	Canada
94	NR	Pepperdine University	United States
95	201-250	University of Iowa	United States
96	69	Erasmus University Rotterdam	Netherlands
97	NR	Hitotsubashi University	Japan
98	182	Northeastern University	United States
99	601-800	Northwestern Polytechnical University	China
100	201-250	Korea University	South Korea