Are the super-rich more likely to be better educated? Or have they spurned scholarship and dedicated themselves to the serious business of being seriously rich?
\nAccording to a global census of dollar billionaires, almost two-thirds have a university degree. That means that even for countries with a high level of graduates, billionaires are disproportionately likely to have gone to university.
\nIn the UK, more than four out of five billionaires were in higher education – not so much rags to riches as rag week to riches.
\nThe educational insights are from an annual profile of the uber-rich, the Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census, produced by the Swiss banking group and a Singapore-based financial intelligence firm.
\nIt examines the wealth and background of more than 2,300 billionaires – and the findings undermine the image of the wealthy as being self-taught self-starters trained on the market stall.
\nAs well as being much more likely to be graduates, a quarter have postgraduate degrees and more than one in 10 has a doctorate.
\nThis map of wealth also shows that these dollar billionaires – worth at least \u00a3620m and typically more than three times this amount – are likely to have attended some of the traditionally most prestigious universities.
\nThe top 20 for universities producing billionaires is dominated by blue-chip, elite US institutions, which take 16 of the places.<\/p>\n
Elite institutions<\/strong> 1. University of Pennsylvania <\/p>\n Credit: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Are the super-rich more likely to be better educated? Or have they spurned scholarship and dedicated themselves to the serious business of being seriously rich? According to a global census of dollar billionaires, almost two-thirds have a university degree. That means that even for countries with a high level of graduates, billionaires are disproportionately likely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":60756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[16,7],"class_list":["post-60753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-shooting","tag-togbe-afede-xiv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe University of Pennsylvania has produced more than any other institution, followed by Harvard, Yale, the University of Southern California, Princeton, Cornell and Stanford.
\nAnd the most likely way of making money is by dealing in money, with billionaires mostly making their fortunes through finance, banking and investment.
\nBut there are also some indications that the geography of the super rich is changing. Reflecting India’s growing economy, the University of Mumbai is in ninth place in the league table.
\nThe only UK university in this wealth list is the London School of Economics, in 10th place, with no place for Oxford or Cambridge.
\nThe rise of Russia’s wealthy is reflected in the 11th place for Lomonosov Moscow State University.
\nBut the dominance of the US universities is not simply about the US producing more billionaires. More than a quarter of the billionaires who attended US universities to take undergraduate degrees were from other countries.
\nThis was even more the case for postgraduate courses in the US, where 39% came from overseas.
\nThere could also be something of a time-lag, because the average age of this group is 63, attending the university systems of four decades ago.
\nUniversity donations
\nThe connection with university carries into later life. More than half of billionaires are involved in philanthropic projects and the biggest single cause they support is education – and within this category, it is particularly higher education that gets their backing.
\nIt helps to explain how Harvard’s fundraising drive could set an eye-watering target of $6.5bn (\u00a34bn).
\nBillionaires are increasingly concentrated in a few global cities, such as London, Moscow and New York
\nThe study shows a pattern of wealth being concentrated in a small number of places. More than 40% of billionaires in Europe live in just 10 cities, headed by Moscow and London. Globally the biggest city for billionaires is New York.
\nIt also creates some jarring contrasts. Nigeria has become the country with the most number of children without access to any education – while this report shows that Nigeria is on course to have the most billionaires in Africa.
\nThere have been repeated international studies from organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showing that going to university remains a strong investment in terms of improving the chance of a higher-income job.
\nSuch studies have rejected the idea that not going to university could be a smarter move or that the value of a degree will fall below the cost of tuition.
\nBut Frank Furedi, author, social commentator and former professor of sociology, says that one of the “big secrets” of the expansion of higher education has been a growing gap between the most prestigious universities and the rest.
\n“The hierarchy has become more fixed,” says Prof Furedi.
\nThese top universities have become the place where “global players gather”.
\nHe says there has always been a tension between universities promoting social mobility and being the route for handing on advantage to the next generation.
\n“Education has always been contradictory, it’s the way that some people make their way up and it’s the way of consolidating privilege.”
\nMost billionaire graduates<\/p>\n
\n2. Harvard University
\n3. Yale University
\n4. University of Southern California
\n5. Princeton University
\n6. Cornell University
\n7. Stanford University
\n8. University of California, Berkeley
\n9. University of Mumbai
\n10. London School of Economics
\n11. Lomonosov Moscow State University
\n12. University of Texas
\n13. Dartmouth College
\n14. University of Michigan
\n15. New York University
\n16. Duke University
\n17. Columbia University
\n18. Brown University
\n19. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
\n20. ETH Zurich<\/p>\n