While there's no single "most common" degree across all billionaires (as many drop out), Business, Economics, and Engineering consistently rank as the top undergraduate majors for the wealthiest, often cited by Forbes. Economics often leads for its versatility and perceived path to finance/business, while Engineering provides strong problem-solving skills, notes Quora and Forbes.
Engineering
This might surprise you, but the scope of engineering is huge and widening! KEY FACT: Engineering is the most common degree among the billionaires. 22% of the world's top 100 billionaires studied engineering.
Jeff Bezos always had an interest to understand how things worked and as a child, he turned his parent's garage into a laboratory. He graduated from Princeton University with a dual degree in computer science and electrical engineering.
MBA • Law • Finance • Business • Economics • Accounting • Engineering • E-commerce • Management • Computer science.
About 90% of millionaires build wealth through long-term investing, often focusing on real estate, starting their own businesses, and making consistent, disciplined financial choices like budgeting, saving, and continuous self-education, rather than flashy spending, with a strong belief in controlling their own financial destiny. They prioritize tangible assets and income streams, using strategies like leverage and tax benefits, and avoid excessive spending on depreciating assets like luxury cars.
Healthcare, especially highly specialized medicine, enables seven-figure incomes, with top neurosurgeons and cardiac surgeons often exceeding $1 million in private practice. This is driven by demand for life-saving procedures, per a 2023 physician compensation study.
According to our analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, many of the best-paying jobs with a bachelor's degree are in the engineering, computer science, and health industries. These fields are not only lucrative but also among the fastest-growing occupations.
According to Forbes' Real Time Billionaires list, Musk has a net worth of $367 billion. Musk's educational background includes studying at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and later transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a degree in physics and economics in 1995.
He had a 4.2 GPA and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. Bezos graduated from Princeton in 1986 with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE), summa cum laude.
Business Administration and Finance
Numerous wealthy individuals have backgrounds in business and finance, including a large number of CEOs, investment bankers, and financial advisors. These majors offer a pathway to high-paying careers in banking, consulting, and corporate leadership.
The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, dropped out of Harvard to focus on building his company. Proving that degrees aren't always necessary, Bill Gates was consistently named the world's richest man between 1995 and 2017, when he was overtaken by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
10 high-paying jobs
Those earning over $10m per year mostly work in management and finance, though there are significant numbers in sales, real estate, operations, medicine, law, engineering and art at this level. In fact, art has a bulge both at the bottom and at the very highest level of earnings – the celebrities.