Which Colleges Have Produced The Most Billionaires?

It's not impossible to become a successful billionaire without a degree under your belt. Just take a look at individuals like Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, two Harvard dropouts who are worth an estimated $132.5 billion and $160.9 billion, respectively.

Yet, for other individuals who achieved unprecedented wealth, they did so after completing their college studies. For a portion of this population, they didn't sign up for classes at just any old school. Rather, according to a 2023 report by Henley & Partners, 35% of the wealthiest people in the U.S. graduated from one of just eight American colleges. John Milne, group head of education services at Henley & Partners, said (via CBS News), "Access to top-tier education is a premise of the world's wealthiest, who maximize their children's prospects to build greater intergenerational success and affluence."

While billionaires can stem from anywhere (just look at "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, who studied at Modesto Junior College and the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, and is estimated to be worth $5 billion, per Forbes), many boast degrees from the same few elite schools. In Forbes' 2024 list Top Colleges for Billionaires, seven of the 12 colleges are Ivy League.

If someone is a billionaire with a college degree (and keep in mind that you don't need a college degree to work these 30 high-paying jobs), there's a high chance they studied at the University of Pennsylvania. This Philadelphia Ivy League institution, founded in 1740, has produced the most billionaire graduates of any college.

At Penn, two of the world's most well-known billionaires once walked its halls: former president, television personality, and entrepreneur Donald Trump (worth $6.5 billion), and Tesla (not a car most likely to be stolen) and SpaceX founder Elon Musk (worth $237.6 billion), who's ranked second on Forbes' World's Billionaires List for 2024. While Trump graduated from the Wharton School with an economics degree in 1968, Musk earned two bachelor's degrees, one in physics and the other in economics, in 1997.

Executive chairman and chief creative officer Tory Burch, who Forbes first named a billionaire in 2013 (net worth $940 million as of May 2024) also graduated from Penn in 1988 with a degree in art history. All told, 36 billionaires graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, six more than the next school on the list. Combined, they have a total net worth of $367 billion.

Right on the heels of the University of Pennsylvania and its 36 billionaire graduates is Stanford in Palo Alto, California. According to Forbes' list, Stanford has produced 30 billionaires, for a total net worth of $90 billion. Though not an Ivy League institution, Stanford has no shortage of billionaire alumni, from golfer Tiger Woods to Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang. While Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are among the wealthiest Stanford alums, they earned their master's degrees from the university, not their undergraduate degrees. Staying in Silicon Valley, though, there's also Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel, who created Snapchat in 2011 with Bobby Murphy. As of August of 2024, Spiegel is worth $2.5 billion.

Harvard, meanwhile, has produced the third-most billionaires at 28, for a combined net worth of $261 billion. Among them, the wealthiest Harvard alum is Steve Ballmer, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers and former Microsoft CEO, whose estimated net worth is $68.7 billion. A graduate of 1977, Ballmer earned bachelor's degrees in mathematics and economics. Decades later, after amassing his fortune, he became a supporter of his alma mater and the next generation of learners. In 2014, for example, his financial support helped expand faculty in Harvard's computer science department.

As for schools four through 12, it includes five more Ivy League schools; however, the number of billionaire graduates drops by about 32% from Harvard at No. 3 to Yale University at No. 4 with 19. Rounding out the billionaires list after Yale are Cornell University (13), the University of Southern California (12), Princeton (12), MIT (11), Dartmouth College (11), Columbia University (11), the University of Michigan (10), and the University of California at Berkeley (10).