You don’t have to be an Ivy Leaguer to make Forbes’ billionaires list—but it sure helps.
By Richard J. Chang, Forbes Staff
“Iowe Columbia a lot,” says Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, who announced in April he would stop donating to his alma mater amid the student protests spreading across college campuses. “Columbia gave me a full scholarship when I really needed it, and I’m loyal. But the [protesters] are not held accountable for their words or actions, and the university is letting them get away with it.”
Columbia might lose millions from Kraft’s decision, considering he has given at least $8 million to the university over his lifetime. Luckily, the New York City school has plenty of other deep-pocketed alumni, including cable magnate Rocco Commisso, who tells Forbes he doesn’t plan to sit on his wallet. “I think now is the time to give more, not less,” says Commisso. “As alumni and wealthy people, we should commit ourselves to help Columbia grow. This is a school that gave me money and opportunity.”
Commisso and Kraft are two of 11 billionaires who got an undergraduate degree from Columbia, making it one of the most elite schools in the world when it comes to educating billionaires. America’s richest people hail from colleges all across the country—from small liberal arts schools like Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where Fidelity Investments CEO Abigail Johnson studied art history, to major public research universities like Indiana University Bloomington, where Mark Cuban graduated with a business degree. But a quarter of the 813 American citizens on Forbes’ billionaires list got their undergraduate degree from one of just a dozen schools. This elite group includes two major California private colleges, two state schools and seven of the eight Ivies, including the University of Pennsylvania, by far the school with the most billionaire undergraduates, with 36, about two-thirds of whom studied at the esteemed Wharton School.
Such deep-pocketed alumni networks can mean big bucks for a school’s endowment and big benefits for students. The late hedge fund billionaire Jim Simons and his wife Marilyn pledged $500 million in unrestricted funds through The Simons Foundation to Stony Brook University’s endowment last year. And Michael Bloomberg gave the largest single donation to any U.S. college or university in 2018, with a $1.5 billion gift to Johns Hopkins University, earmarked for undergraduate financial aid. Billionaire names adorn everything from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, to Harvard’s Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, to the University of Oregon’s Phil and Penny Knight Campus.
Of course fundraising from the ultra-wealthy can also place schools’ budgets at the whims of a small group of donors. Charlie Munger (d. 2023) donated $200 million to the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2016—with the requirement that the school construct a dorm using his design, which lacked windows and stirred controversy before the gift was scrapped. When Charles and David Koch endowed a professorship at George Mason University as far back as the 1990s, their foundations got a seat on the board that chooses nominees for the position. And when billionaires are displeased with how a school is run, they might just pull their checkbooks altogether. Kraft isn’t the only wealthy donor halting his giving these days—so are others, such as hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman, real estate investor Barry Sternlicht and Len Blavatnik, who got his wealth from both chemicals and the music industry.
Here are the universities with the most American billionaire undergraduate alumni. (Not that you have to go to college to get ultra-rich—just ask dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg and designer Tom Ford, or never-wents like Taylor Swift and LeBron James.) (Net worths are as of June 6, 2024.)
1. University of Pennsylvania
36 Billionaires
Location: Philadelphia│Total Net Worth: $367 Billion
With more than three dozen billionaire alumni, the Philadelphia institution educated the likes of Tesla’s Elon Musk, former president Donald Trump, and Apollo cofounders Marc Rowan and Josh Harris. Penn is also in the blood of the heirs to the Estée Lauder fortune, with Leonard Lauder, William Lauder, Aerin Lauder and Ronald Lauder all attending over the span of four decades. Leonard and Ronald Lauder helped to establish Penn’s Lauder Institute, providing joint MBA and Master’s degrees in international studies, and Leonard Lauder gave $125 million to the university in 2022 to create a tuition-free nursing program. Though many CEOs—from Comcast’s Brian Roberts to Bilt Rewards’ Ankur Jain—studied business at Wharton, it’s not the only school within the university to turn out wealthy alumni. Designer Tory Burch got an art history degree from Penn, while film producer Dick Wolf studied English. Wolf and Rowan were among the university’s wealthy donors who called for former president Liz Magill to resign last year following her testimony during a congressional hearing on the rise of antisemitism on college campuses.
2. Stanford University
30 Billionaires
Location: Stanford, California│Total Net Worth: $90 Billion
The Silicon Valley school has helped mold plenty of tech billionaires, from Andy Fang and Stanley Tang, who were students when they cofounded food delivery app DoorDash, to Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, two fraternity brothers who created the project that became Snapchat. Several banking and finance moguls graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the institution, including Charles Schwab, Capital One’s Richard Fairbank and Scott Crabill, managing partner at private equity firm Thoma Bravo. Then there’s Jerry Yang, who completed his undergraduate and masters studies at Stanford, then cofounded Yahoo after dropping out of a Ph.D. program at the school. Yang now chairs the university’s board.
3. Harvard University
28 Billionaires
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts│Total Net Worth: $261 Billion
Harvard College has educated Natalie Portman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, six U.S. presidents—and more than two dozen current U.S. billionaires. That includes Citadel’s Ken Griffin, who installed a satellite dish on his dorm roof to get real-time stock quotes, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Airbnb cofounder Nathan Blecharczyk. Some alumni are Boston legends, including Jim Koch, the creator of Sam Adams beer, and Tom Werner, whose Fenway Sports Group owns the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park and a big stake in New England Sports Network. Just as famous as the school’s graduates, however, are its dropouts. Bill Gates, for example, left to launch Microsoft in 1975, while Mark Zuckerberg left in 2004 to pursue Facebook full-time. He and his wife Priscilla Chan, who met at Harvard, announced in 2021 they would give $519 million to the university through The Chan Zuckerberg Foundation to launch and operate the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence, named after Zuckerberg’s mother.
4. Yale University
19 Billionaires
Location: New Haven, Connecticut│Total Net Worth: $149 Billion
FedEx founder Fred Smith famously wrote an economics paper while an undergraduate at Yale that later became the basis for the $90 billion (revenue) company. Three heirs behind candy company Mars, Inc. are all Bulldogs, too, as are oil tycoons Lee, Edward, Robert and Sid Bass. Other notable Yalies include Blackstone chairman and CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who gave $150 million to the university in 2015 to create a new student center, as well as Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra, who cofounded photo bookmarking site Pinterest.
5. Cornell University
13 Billionaires
Location: Ithaca, New York│Total Net Worth: $60.4 Billion
Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business, named after the founder of the eponymous household cleaning products giant, has three living alumni from the family’s fifth generation: Helen Johnson-Leipold, H. Fisk Johnson and S. Curtis Johnson, who together pledged $150 million in 2017 to fund the school. Outside the business school, engineering alumni include David Duffield, who cofounded software companies PeopleSoft and Workday, and Sequoia Capital partner Douglas Leone.
6 (tie). University of Southern California
12 Billionaires
Location: Los Angeles│Total Net Worth: $72.5 Billion
Known for its School of Cinematic Arts, USC was the launching point for filmmaker George Lucas, who graduated in 1967 and who gave $175 million to the film school in 2006. Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of software giant Salesforce graduated from USC’s Marshall School of Business, meanwhile. And Scott Cook, cofounder of Intuit, studied economics at the university. Some of California’s biggest real estate moguls also call USC their alma mater, including former LA mayoral candidate Rick Caruso, Edward Roski Jr. and two heirs behind storage company Public Storage, Tamara Gustavson and B. Wayne Hughes Jr.
When real estate developer Igor Olenicoff first arrived on campus as a transfer student in the 1960s, he didn’t have any friends. Olenicoff, whose family immigrated to the United States at the age of 15 from Iran, said pledging a fraternity at USC was the first chance for him to make real connections—relationships that he continues to use in business.
“When I needed a large unsecured line of credit to do early real estate projects, I could go back to people I knew at USC in the banking world.” Olenicoff tells Forbes. “Having friends in the business world was very helpful after graduating. That’s truly what USC provided.”
6 (tie). Princeton University
12 Billionaires
Location: Princeton, New Jersey│Total Net Worth: $292 Billion
With the second richest person in the country, Jeff Bezos, as an alumnus, Princeton’s combined billionaire net worth trumps that of any other college. Bezos and his billionaire ex-wife Mackenzie Scott are both graduates, though they didn’t meet until after they separately left the university and took jobs at hedge fund D.E. Shaw. Princeton is also the jumping off point for several other tech fortunes. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, an alum, and his wife Wendy established a $25 million endowment in 2009 to fund “risk-taking projects” in natural sciences and engineering. And, in 2002, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman gave $30 million to Princeton to help expand its student body. Among the alumni are also notable names in finance, such as investor Carl Icahn, Cerberus Capital CEO Stephen Feinberg and Michael Novogratz, the founder of crypto investment firm Galaxy Digital.
8 (tie). Massachusetts Institute of Technology
11 Billionaires
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts│Total Net Worth: $88.3 Billion
Best known for its engineering and physical science programs, MIT has helped mold several notable healthcare and tech billionaires. That includes Drew Houston, who cofounded Dropbox with MIT classmate Arash Ferdowsi, and Lisa Su, the CEO of semiconductor firm AMD. The school named its nanoscience research building after Su in 2022, after she donated an undisclosed sum. Other alumni include founder of analytics software firm MicroStrategy and Bitcoin investor Michael Saylor, and technology-focused venture capital investor Philippe Laffont. Koch Industries co-CEO Charles Koch and his brother William Koch both studied engineering at MIT. The Institute’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research is named after their late brother David (d. 2019), also an alum, who gave $100 million to MIT in 2007 to build the facility.
“I spent my early years believing I was destined for a career in engineering, but it became clear at MIT that I would be a lousy engineer,” says Charles Koch in a statement to Forbes. “But MIT helped me develop a problem-solving mindset and the ability to see the bigger picture.”
8 (tie). Dartmouth College
11 Billionaires
Location: Hanover, New Hampshire │Total Net Worth: $48.5 Billion
Almost all of Dartmouth’s billionaire alumni got rich in private equity. Leon Black, cofounder of Apollo Global Management, studied philosophy and history at Dartmouth and was a trustee of the college from 2002 to 2011. Black and his wife Debra gave $48 million to the Black Family Visual Arts Center there. (A college spokesperson stated there were no plans to rename the center after Black was sued by a woman in 2023 alleging Black raped her in 2002 at the home of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein; Black has denied the allegations.) Others include Thoma Bravo managing partner Holden Spaht; Jim Coulter, co-CEO of TPG; and Nvidia board member Tench Coxe, whose wealth largely stems from his stake in the chipmaker but who has served for more than three decades at VC firm Sutter Hill Ventures. Stephen Mandel Jr., founder of hedge fund outfit Lone Pine Capital, is the third generation of his family to graduate from Dartmouth and served as chair of the college’s board of trustees from 2010 to 2014.
8 (tie). Columbia University
11 Billionaires
Location: New York City│Total Net Worth: $49.5 Billion
A majority of the NYC Ivy’s billionaire alumni got their money from finance and investments. Among them are Sami Mnaymneh, CEO of private equity firm H.I.G. Capital; Daniel Loeb, founder of New York-based hedge fund Third Point; and Daniel and Dirk Ziff, who inherited publishing company Ziff Davis and built it into the now-defunct Ziff Brothers Investments. Columbia’s engineering school also helped mint a few billionaires, namely Rocco Commisso, founder of cable company Mediacom, and Altair Engineering cofounder James Scapa. Kraft, meanwhile, has given at least $8 million to Columbia, including a $3 million gift to establish the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life in 2000.
11 (tie). University of Michigan
10 Billionaires
Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan│Total Net Worth: $181 Billion
The University of Michigan has a diverse group of billionaire alumni spanning various industries. Larry Page, Michigan’s richest alumnus, received a bachelor’s in engineering from the school in 1995, three years before cofounding Google with fellow Stanford Ph.D. student Sergey Brin. Michigan’s Ross School of Business is named after alumnus and real estate baron Stephen Ross, founder of Related Companies, who donated $100 million to the school in 2004 and gave an additional $100 million in 2013. Groupon cofounder Eric Lefkofsky became an early entrepreneur during his freshman year at UM selling carpets out of the back of a van, and later entered business with billionaire Brad Keywell, who he met at University of Michigan Law School.
11 (tie). University of California, Berkeley
10 Billionaires
Location: Berkeley, California│Total Net Worth: $30.4 Billion
A Silicon Valley pioneer, most of the billionaires who earned their degrees from the University of California’s flagship campus made their fortunes in tech. Richest among them is engineering and mathematics graduate Charles Simonyi, the early Microsoft application developer who helped create Word and Excel. Alice Schwartz was studying biochemistry at Berkeley when she met her husband David, later cofounding life science tech developer Bio-Rad Laboratories with him in a Quonset hut. Another husband-wife duo who met at Berkeley, Weili Dai and Sehat Sutardja, cofounded semiconductor producer Marvell Technology. Others, such as investors Mike Milken and Behdad Eghbali, studied business at Berkeley.
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