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Journalism of Courage
Top 10 colleges with richest alumni: Some universities around the world are renowned for producing a remarkable number of billionaire alumni.
Harvard University leads the list with 104 billionaire graduates, even excluding notable dropouts like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, according to Salas Díaz and Young (2024).
Following closely are Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania, with 69 and 38 billionaire alumni, respectively.
Stanford’s list includes Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang, while Penn counts Elon Musk among its graduates.
Other top institutions include Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Yale University.
Columbia boasts legendary investor Warren Buffett, while MIT has produced industrial leaders like Charles Koch of Koch Industries.
While U.S. universities dominate the top ranks, Asian institutions are rising fast. The University of Mumbai, Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Seoul National University now appear in the global top 20 for billionaire alumni.
Peking University counts Baidu co-founder Robin Li among its graduates, and India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, graduated from the University of Mumbai.
Russia’s Moscow State University has also featured in the top 20, producing billionaires like EuroChem founder Andrey Melnichenko.
| Rank | University Name | Number of Billionaires | Country | Billionaire Alumni | Billionaire – Source of Wealth |
|
1
|
Harvard University
|
$104.00
|
USA
|
Steve Ballmer | Microsoft |
| Michael Bloomberg | Bloomberg L.P. | ||||
|
2
|
Stanford University
|
$69.00
|
USA
|
Jerry Yang | Yahoo |
| Andy Fang | DoorDash | ||||
| 3 | University of Pennsylvania | 38 | USA | Elon Musk | Tesla |
| 4 | Columbia University | 32 | USA | Warren Buffett | Berkshire Hathaway |
| 5 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 28 | USA | Charles Koch | Koch Industries |
| 6 | Yale University | 24 | USA | Stephen A. Schwarzman | Blackstone Group |
| 7 | Cornell University | 22 | USA | Robert F. Smith | Vista Equity Partners |
| 7 | University of Mumbai | 22 | India | Mukesh Ambani | Reliance Industries |
| 9 | Tsinghua University | 19 | China | Sun Hongbin | Sunac China Holdings |
| 10 | New York University | 18 | USA | John Paulson | Paulson & Co. (hedge fund) |
Note: Salas Díaz & Young (2024). The study was published in September 2024, but the underlying data were collected in March 2021.
