This diverse educational background illustrates that while some of the world’s wealthiest individuals achieved success through traditional academic paths, others forged their own entrepreneurial journeys early on.
Not all billionaires quit college to start a business in a garage. Would Bill Gates truly be Bill Gates if he hadn’t attended Harvard University — where he had access to the best computer equipment and resources in the market — for some time at least? META CEO Mark Zuckerberg replicated Gates’ passion (and his decision to drop out of an Ivy League), but let’s not forget that Facebook was birthed within the very dorms of Harvard. On the other hand, Elon Musk hosted large, ticketed house parties at the University of Pennsylvania, so he could pay for its tuition fees.
The one thing Gates, Zuckerberg, and Musk have in common, other than being the world’s top billionaires, are fascinating stories from their university days. However, let’s first take a look at where they were enrolled, the degrees they pursued, and, in some cases, when they decided to drop out.
1. Bernard Arnault
Bernard Arnault, who recently overtook Elon Musk to become the richest person in the world, has a staggering net worth of $221 billion (approximately Rs 18 lakh crore). The chairman and CEO of LVMH, the global luxury goods conglomerate, has an engineering degree from École Polytechnique, one of France’s premier engineering institutions.
2. Elon Musk
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world with a net worth of $1.98 billion (approximately Rs 16 lakh crore), first enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 1990. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the university’s Wharton School. In 1995, he was accepted into a Ph.D. programme in materials science at Stanford University but ended up dropping out two days later to cash in on the internet boom.
3. Jeff Bezos
When Jeff Bezos and his former wife MacKenzie Scott founded Amazon in a rented garage in Bellevue, little did he know that he’d be running one of the largest businesses in the world that would make him the second-richest person across the globe with a $193.9 billion (approximately Rs 16 lakh crore) net worth. In 1982, Bezos enrolled at Princeton University, where he initially majored in physics but later switched to electrical engineering and computer science. Bezos was also awarded an honorary doctorate in science and technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008.
4. Mark Zuckerberg
As indicated in The Social Network, a fictional retelling of how Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook, the META CEO was pursuing his bachelor’s in psychology and computer science at Harvard University when he came up with the idea for Facebook. While the social network was initially limited to users from the university, Zuckerberg and his co-founders soon realised its potential, leading the former to drop out of Harvard in 2005.
5. Larry Ellison
Another prominent name in the list of the world’s top 10 billionaires, Larry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle, has a staggering net worth of $143.8 billion (approximately Rs 11 lakh crore). Ellison first enrolled in the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign as a premed student, where he was named ‘science student of the year’. However, he had to leave the university before taking his finals for personal reasons, following which he completed his remaining term at the University of Chicago where he studied physics and mathematics and dabbled in computer design.
6. Warren Buffett
Did you know that Warren Buffet, one of the richest people in the world, was once rejected by Harvard Business School? Back in 1947, Buffett matriculated at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied for two years before transferring to the University of Nebraska. He graduated from here with a bachelor of science degree in business administration at the age of 19. After being rejected by Harvard, Buffet got himself enrolled in Columbia Business School for a master of science degree in economics, after learning that Benjamin Graham, the ‘father of the stock market’ held classes there. Following this, the billionaire attended the New York Institute of Finance.
7. Bill Gates
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was already a National Merit Scholar when he graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He enrolled in Harvard University for a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and graduate-level computer science in the same year but dropped out after two years to join forces with childhood friend Paul Allen and kick-start their own computer software company.
8. Larry Page
Google co-founder Larry Page, the eighth-richest person in the world with a net worth of $123.3 billion (approximately Rs 10 lakh crore), had been playing around with computers since he was six. Page completed his bachelor’s in computer engineering from the University of Michigan in 1995 and his master’s in computer science from Stanford University in 1998.
9. Steve Ballmer
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO from 2000 to 2014, stayed in a dorm room down the hall from Bill Gates while they were both at Harvard University. Ballmer, who graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics and economics in 1977, made quite a name for himself at the university, becoming the manager of the Harvard Crimson football team, and a prominent presence on The Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the Harvard Advocate. Later, he attended Stanford Graduate School of Business for his MBA but then dropped out in 1980 to tie up with Gates and join Microsoft.
10. Sergey Brin
The other Google co-founder Sergey Brin hails from a family of academics. In September 1990, the billionaire who has a current net worth of $118.2 billion (Rs 9 lakh crore) enrolled in the University of Maryland, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and mathematics. He then enrolled in a computer science graduate study at Stanford University on a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation, securing a master’s in the subject in 1995. He even enrolled in a Ph.D. programme in computer science at Stanford, but left it midway to start Google with fellow co-founder Larry Page.
