Do Ivy League Degrees Matter for Leadership Success?

Our nation’s political and business leaders spend the crucial years between adolescent dependency and adulthood preparing for the rest of their lives, and colleges and universities are typically an important part of their preparation for leadership. While in college, students learn how to navigate independence from parents, gain leadership skills, acquire important vocationally relevant knowledge, etc. As a general rule, then, our nation’s leaders are relatively well-educated. Greatly expanding upon a study by Declan Bradley for the Chronicle of Higher Education, my wunderkind research assistant Nicholas Jadwisienczak and I have observed:

1. An overwhelming majority of the nation’s top political and business leaders have at least a bachelor’s degree. Members of Congress disproportionately have undergraduate degrees from top private schools, with Harvard comfortably topping the list.
2. Among political congressmen and governors, Democrats were more likely to receive their undergraduate degree from an Ivy League school than Republicans. For example, five of 23 Democratic governors attended one of the eight Ivy League schools—three went to Harvard—compared with only one of 27 Republican governors—Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who attended Yale. Although often championing themselves as friends of the working class, top Democratic politicians are more likely than Republicans to attend elite private schools that many consider academic enclaves for the rich. Perhaps that is partially why some prominent Republican politicians—notably incoming Vice President Vance—favor much higher endowment taxes on elite private schools.
3. Looking at the CEOs of the Fortune 500, relatively few were Ivy League graduates, with far more graduating from flagship state universities than elite private schools. An impressive number of CEOs are immigrants from other countries, and some very notable ones—for example, Mark Zuckerberg and Michael Dell—never even graduated from college.
4. Looking at the top dozen names on the 2024 Forbes richest Americans list—whose compilation is largely overseen by a favorite former student of mine, Chase Peterson-Withorn—four (33 percent) have no college degree—Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Dell—while another three are immigrants to the U.S.—Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, and Jensen Huang. More had no degrees than had an Ivy League undergraduate diploma, which Jeff Bezos received at Princeton, Musk at Penn, and Steve Ballmer at Harvard. Also, a few—Warren Buffet, Larry Page, Huang—have degrees from rather high quality but not uber-elite state universities—Nebraska, Michigan, and Oregon State.
5. While we did not examine it exhaustively, a majority of the leaders also had some formal graduate or professional college training. Among the politicians, law school was easily the most favored field, whereas many of the business leaders received business-related degrees, often an M.B.A. (Although very recent data on job placement suggest that acquiring an M.B.A. degree from a prestigious school increasingly does not lead to instantaneous employment.)

A detailed examination, beyond the scope of this epistle, would show that the perceived quality of a college, while relevant in predicting the vocational success of graduates, is often less important than the major field of study.

In a book I wrote a few years ago, Restoring the Promise: Higher Education in America, I observed that the aver age mid-career earnings of graduates in some engineering and computer science major fields were roughly double that of students majoring in psychology, music, or elementary education. And while I personally strongly believe ignorance of our past is a major cause of decline in our sense of national pride and cohesion, at the same time students majoring in history do not fare particularly well in job markets. The law of diminishing returns no doubt applies: a little knowledge of our past is very fruitful, but a detailed and lengthy study of it is not remunerative—or probably otherwise rewarding—for most Americans.

This is merely a progress report on some current research. I want to know more precisely whether uber rich Americans obtain success through inheritance or shrewd investment decisions, and does higher education have much to do with it either way? The experience of many illustrious college dropouts suggests that possession of a college degree is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for becoming wealthy. Indeed, at some point such stellar entrepreneurs as Zuckerberg and Gates found attending Harvard an impediment to success. Still, in general it appears attending college enhances the probability of success. Do the costs of college—which have stabilized in recent years—exceed the benefits? The answer obviously varies with the personalities and capabilities of the individual.