Forbes released an article a couple of weeks ago talking about what universities billionaires went to.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/19/billionaires-harvard-education-biz-billies-cx_af_0519billieu.html
Because I like the new charting functionality in Excel 2007, I went ahead and plotted those schools out on a chart.
It makes sense that Harvard, Stanford, and Penn are at the top because they have ridiculously strong business programs. I think that an interesting figure would be the number of billionaires divided by number of living alumni from each school. Even though the percentages would be very small, schools which have tons of alumni, like USC with 16,000 undergrads would be less versus MIT with 4,000 undergrads. They both have nine billionaires, but an MIT grad is four times more likely to be a billionaire.
Another question I am also interested in knowing is the value added to an individual on their quest to become a billionaire. I guess more specifically, did earning a Harvard degree enable them to become a billionaire, or were they let into Harvard to begin with because they possessed the “right stuff” and would have become a billionaire on their own accord?
I think it would be very interesting to analyze not just billionaire, but millionaire alma maters as well.
Since I don’t have that data handy, I’ll just sit here and bank on my Penn degree to one day throw me billions of dollars.
3 responses so far ↓
1 PiFry // Jun 9, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Or maybe they got into Harvard because they came from loaded families with tons of money and connections, and the “right stuff” mattered as little as the education.
For a nice example of this effect on a non-billionaire (but on someone who could have been had he gone that route), take George W. Bush. Harvard MBA. Has never once successfully run a business or enterprise in many attempts over the course of his career (his list of enterprises he has failed to run even moderately well includes oil companies, timber companies, baseball teams, and sovereign national superpowers). And yet…
2 DjEttDizzle // Jun 16, 2008 at 5:28 pm
In an attemot to find the economic value of an Ivy Leage degree, some reputable publication (which one, I forget) did a study of the lifetime earnings of people that transfered out of Ivy League schools versus students that actually graduated from Ivies. The study found no significant difference between the salaries of the two groups, possibly indicating that the actual degree (and/or the last 2 or 3 years of an Ivy education) isn’t worth as much as having the family connections/right stuff to get into those schools.
Or it could mean that the value of the degree and education gives you about the same boost as having the confidence to bail on an elitist degree in favor of a cheaper education.
3 Ryan // Jun 27, 2008 at 11:51 am
You forgot the 1% from Franklin Pierce…. ME! hahah
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