What’s The Best College Degree To Make You Rich?
One question on the minds of people considering getting a college degree is this: What degree is going to provide me with the very best opportunity to become truly wealthy and successful?
And this same question is often very much on the minds of people already working full time who are looking to get a second degree–perhaps an MBA, Psychology, or other graduate degree to boost their work skills and career prospects.
One company took a close look at Forbes’s list of the 100 wealthiest people in the world to answer this question, and the results are often surprising!
Consider these facts:
More than half did not receive degrees at all! However, most if not all, did go to college and took specific courses and degrees that eventually helped them succeed in life. The courses these highly successful people took may even surprise you!
Now we’ve all heard the stories about Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison were college dropouts. In fact, 14 of the 100 wealthy people on the Forbes list never received college degrees at all. These include Larry Page and Sergey Brin (who co-founded Google), David Koch (who with his brother Charles runs Koch Industries) and Michael Dell (the founder of Dell Computers).
But that’s not the full picture.
They All Attributed These College Courses To Their Eventual Success
Let’s get one thing straight. The people we are mentioning all went to the best universities in the world and are very highly educated.
Even they attribute their success to the following courses and degree programs they were enrolled in, and each admit they would never have had success unless they took this degree program…
So, why did these wealthy people choose the following degrees…
The Forbes list includes a number of billionaires who founded companies in Silicon Valley, including Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, eBay’s Pierre Omidyar, Digg’s Kevin Rose, PayPal’s Peter Thiel, and Flickr’s Caterina Fake.
All of them attended top universities; Zuckerberg went to Harvard, the others to Stanford.
Here’s a list of the Forbes 100 with some additional information about their education:
- Bill Gates – Currently, the world’s richest man, he dropped out of Harvard to found Microsoft.
- Steve Jobs – Apple co-founder, dropped out of Reed College after a semester and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes at what is now California College of the Arts. He audited one course on calligraphy that he said was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and cited it as a direct influence on how to make fonts legible with proportional spacing in early Apple computers.
- Elon Musk – Founder of SpaceX, PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity and Zip2, never attended college; started an online city guide with his brother at age 24 when they couldn’t find complete information for their own hometown, which launched a company that in 1999 was sold to Compaq Computer in a deal that made Musk $300 million in stock and cash overnight.
- Warren Buffett – Currently, the world’s third-richest man, he attended the University of Nebraska–Lincoln for two years before transferring to Columbia University, where he graduated in 1950 with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. He took a Dale Carnegie public speaking course that was offered at Columbia and has said that was one of the most important things he ever did to prepare himself for business.
- Ingvar Kamprad – Founder of IKEA, never attended college but took night courses in accounting to learn how to read financial statements.
- Sheldon Adelson – Owner of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, didn’t attend college; served in the Army Signal Corps. Instead of becoming an engineer like his father wanted him to be, he took over his father’s business selling toiletry kits and went door to door with them throughout New England. Later, he worked for his father’s business, went to law school and started his own law firm. The rest is history.
However, there are plenty of billionaires in other industries, though. Many of them took a completely different career path.
What are the skills wealthy people did to achieve their dreams…
The Skills Wealthy People Follow To Become Wealthy
In addition to getting a great education, below are some “skills” and advice wealthy people follow to achieve their dreams. Read on to see how they can help you:
Do What You Love
Wealthy people are passionate about what they do. They don’t settle for anything less than the best, so if their career isn’t stimulating enough or fulfilling in some way then they will work on creating an environment that allows them to thrive and find joy through fulfillment of purpose—even at great lengths!
Keep Learning and Evolving
As a leader in the field, they strive to always stay one step ahead of their competition. They do this by educating themselves on new trends and technologies that will help them provide better service for all those around them while also utilizing cutting-edge tools like social media platforms as well!
They Give Of Themselves Selflessly.
They volunteer their time and energy to help others whenever possible, from providing a consultant free reign on a project or offering criticism with no judgment as long as it is constructive-whether that be through words alone (like praise).
“Bad Luck” Is Not Part Of Their Vocabulary.
Wealthy people believe that bad luck can’t affect them–they’re the end product from all those good choices they’ve made and have a lot more positives than negatives going for themselves. They also work tirelessly which helps too!
They’re Great Listeners
The wealthy are always asking questions and listening intently. They want to know what it feels like for someone else, so they can learn from their experiences! Some of these conversations may lead them in new directions where there was no path before – think about all those ideas you had after hearing another person talk or experiencing something firsthand?
And here’s something to keep in mind: You don’t have to graduate from college or a well-known university to become truly wealthy!
Just by taking the following degree courses can set you on a path to wealth.
Are you ready to take the first step towards becoming as successful as these people?
What Are The Everyday College Degrees That Lead To Billionaire Status?
According to Forbes’s list of the 100 wealthiest people in the world, the results are often surprising. Consider these facts:
As mentioned previously – a number of billionaires do not have a college degree. (Famously, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg all dropped out of college prior to completing a degree, and the dyslexic Richard Branson dropped out of high school.) However, they all went to college.
The everyday college degrees and courses that these billionaires took will surprise you!
It was everything from a Business Degree, Psychology Degree, Computer Programming, Art, Philosophy, and even an English degree.
Here’s the breakdown:
- Twice as many billionaires have degrees in the arts as in math and science.
- 22% Engineering
- 12% Business
- 10% Other
- 9% Arts
- 8% Economics
- 3% Finance
- 2% Science
- 2% Mathematics
Now, if all you’re looking for is a job offer and not necessarily billionaire status, the National Association of Colleges and Employers has compiled a list of the academic majors most likely to get you at least one job offer by the time graduation day rolls around.
Here, in rank order, are the top 10:
- Computer science
- Economics
- Accounting
- Engineering
- Business administration
- Sociology/social work
- Mathematics/statistics
- Psychology
- History/political science
- Health care
The bottom line is this: It’s not what you study in college, but your drive, ambition and ability to make use of the opportunities that open up before you that matter more. If you are willing to put in the hard work, you can succeed no matter what college degree (or lack thereof) you receive.
Learn more about affordable degree programs today.