Several prominent billionaires are college dropouts who left school to build their businesses, most notably Bill Gates (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Steve Jobs (Apple), and Michael Dell (Dell Technologies). Others include Larry Ellison (Oracle), Jack Dorsey (Twitter/Square), and Travis Kalanick (Uber).
Most of us grow up believing that a college or university education is key to a successful career and a comfortable life. But with around a quarter of billionaires having dropped out of school and higher education, that belief seems to be something of a myth.
Richard Branson: The founder of Virgin Group, a conglomerate of more than 400 companies, dropped out of high school at age 16 and never attended college. 2. Steve Jobs: The co-founder of Apple Inc. dropped out of college after just one semester, but went on to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history.
An overall hate score was then determined, and the billionaires were ranked accordingly. Donald Trump tops the ranking as the most hated billionaire of 2025, with a hate score of 100. He has the highest number of negative news mentions (379.9K) and fraud-related searches (143K).
Carl Lindner Jr.
left school at 14 to help his family's dairy farm. Borrowing money, he and his brothers opened a single ice cream shop. That modest start grew into United Dairy Farmers, followed by investments in banking, insurance, and real estate. His fortune eventually topped $1.7 billion.
Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his second year in order to complete the project. Zuckerberg, Moskovitz and the other co-founders moved to Palo Alto, California, where they leased a small house that served as an office. Over the summer, Zuckerberg met Peter Thiel, who invested in his company.
The most successful businessmen without degrees
While Buffett is number one as measured by total giving, George Soros has given away a larger percentage of his net worth than anyone else on this list: 76% so far. A significant amount of his Open Society Foundations' work over the years has gone to support democracy in places like Central and Eastern Europe.
Henry Ford - inventor, owner of automobile factories. Henry Ford went to an ordinary rural parish school, but even there he studied very bad - he regularly attended not lessons, but garages and workshops, where he frantically studied various mechanisms.
Many billionaires had humble beginnings. Some billionaires who grew up poor are Oprah Winfrey, Howard Schultz and Ralph Lauren.
Elon Musk is widely considered the closest person to becoming a trillionaire, with predictions suggesting he could reach that milestone within the next few years, especially if Tesla hits ambitious performance goals tied to a massive stock grant. Other contenders often mentioned include Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, with reports indicating several individuals might reach trillionaire status by 2035.
He attended Eli Whitney High School and George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School, both in Brooklyn, and then Trenton Central High School in Trenton, New Jersey. He did not graduate, dropping out during his sophomore year at Trenton Central High School.
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No, Oprah Winfrey is richer than Taylor Swift, with Forbes reporting Oprah's net worth at around $3 billion compared to Taylor's $1.6 billion as of mid-2025, making Oprah the richest woman in entertainment and the first Black woman billionaire, while Swift is the world's richest female musician.
Kylie Jenner has publicly shared that she deals with chronic back pain since her second pregnancy, leading her to undergo stem cell therapy, and has also discussed struggles with anxiety, while a past health scare involved a diagnosis of recurrent corneal erosion syndrome (an eye condition) and possibly an incidental brain aneurysm found on a scan, though she focuses on managing the pain and mental health.
Based on Forbes, American singer Taylor Swift is the wealthiest female musician, with a net worth of US$1.6 billion as of 2024. Barbadian singer Rihanna became the first female musician to attain a billionaire status in 2021, with a net worth of $1.7 billion at that time.
These are the 15 most handsome billionaires in the world.
Jamsetji donated generously mainly for education and healthcare. He was named the greatest philanthrope of the 20th century by EdelGive Foundation and Hurun Research India. He topped the list of the world's top philanthropists of the 20th century with an estimated donation of $102 billion adjusted for inflation.
Elon Musk has just gotten even closer to being the first-ever trillionaire after a court reinstated his Tesla stock options worth billions. According to Forbes's billionaires index, the Tesla chief executive's net worth climbed to $749bn (£559bn) on Friday, making Musk the first person to surpass the $700bn milestone.
Billionaires who come from poor families today have some of the biggest companies in the world. One such billionaire is Sergey Brin, who migrated from Russia to the US at a young age with his parents, suffering from antisemitic discrimination back in the 1970s.
Ritesh Agarwal – Founder & CEO, OYO
Ritesh Agarwal dropped out of college at a very young age to pursue entrepreneurship. With a strong interest in technology and hospitality, he started experimenting with business ideas early. He founded OYO, which went on to become one of the world's largest hospitality chains.