Higher education, is it a pre-requisite to becoming a billionaire? People believe that having a good education is critical to attaining financial stability. As much as possible every person wants to study and obtain a higher education at one of the best universities worldwide.
Higher education not a pre-requisite to achieving billionaire status
The latest Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census indicated that higher education is not a pre-requisite to becoming a billionaire. The study found that 35% of the 2,352 billionaires worldwide do not have a tertiary-level degree. The world’s billionaires had a combined net worth of $7.4 trillion this year.
In fact, two of the most well-known billionaires were Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) are university dropouts.
Gates and Zuckerberg both dropped out during their undergraduate year from Harvard University to start their businesses. Based on Forbes’ Billionaire’s list, Gates has a net worth of $80.9 billion while Zuckerberg has a net worth of $35.3 billion.
United States has 16 out of the top 20 billionaire schools worldwide
According to the study, 16 out of the top 20 billionaire schools are located in the United States. The four other billionaire schools in the top 20 are the University of Mumbai, The London School of Economics and Political Science, Lomonosov Moscow State University and ETH Zurich.
The University of Mumbai has 12 billionaire alumni, most of any university outside the United States with billionaire graduates. The London School of Economics and Political Science and the Lomonosov Moscow State University each has 11 billionaire alumni. ETH Zurich has billionaire graduates.
University of Pennsylvania has the most number of undergraduate billionaires
The study found that the University of Pennsylvania has 25 undergraduate alumni billionaires, the highest number. The Harvard University ranked second with 22 alumni billionaires followed by Yale University with 20 alumni billionaires. The University of Southern California ranked fourth and Princeton University ranked fifth with 16 and 14 alumni billionaires, respectively.
The Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census 2014 found that more than 25% of the billionaires who obtained their undergraduate degrees in the 16 universities in the United States were born outside the country. Almost 40% of those who attended these top U.S. universities for post-graduate studies were non-U.S. citizens.
The United States has 571 billionaires followed by China 190, United Kingdom 130, Germany 123 and Russia 114. Wealth-X predicted that the global billionaire population will increase to more than 3,800 by 2020.
