Top CEOs More Likely to Have Graduated From State Schools

There’s no question that an Ivy League education is an asset, but is it really worth the hefty price tag and elitism that comes along with it? According to this recent Wall Street Journal article, the diplomas that hang in the offices of most of the nation’s top CEOs are from state universities or small private schools. This may be surprising, as most people (myself included!) automatically assumed that getting that Harvard degree was like a “golden handshake,” where you are inducted into the elite club which rules finance and business. Turns out, this isn’t so. In fact, only 10% of CEOs heading the top 500 companies received an undergraduate degree from an Ivy League school.

Who are these big-time CEOs with the small-time degrees?

Obviously, there’s a bunch, but we’ll mention a few. First, there’s the CEO of Wal-Mart, H. Lee Scott, who attended Pittsburg State University in Kansas. There’s also Intel CEO Paul Otellini who went to the University of San Francisco, and Cosco CEO James Sinegal who went to San Diego City College. Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson attended the University of Texas-Austin, and Proctor & Gamble’s CEO A.G. Lafley graduated from Hamilton College in New York. All this goes to show that innovation, perseverance, intelligence, and acumen go a lot further in cultivating success that the byline on your degree.

“What counts most, CEOs say, is a person’s capacity to seize opportunities. As students, they recall immersing themselves in their interests, becoming campus leaders and forging strong relationships with teachers. And at state and lesser-known schools, where many were the first in their families to attend college, they sought challenges and mixed with students from diverse backgrounds — an experience that helped them later in their corporate climbs.”

Why Did They Choose State or Small Schools?

Several of the CEOs mentioned that they chose the schools they did because they could receive more individualized attention at a state or small school, whose professors were devoted to teaching rather than advancing their own careers. In addition, they pointed out that there’s no point in attending a difficult, prestigious school if it doesn’t fit your needs, or just doesn’t pay attention.

“You can go to a top-end school and end up dramatically underperforming, or you can go to a place that cares and blow away what everyone thinks,” says Mr. Green, who still stays in touch with his economics professor, Charlie Kramer. A trustee at Dean, he feels angry when he encounters “parents who are afraid or ashamed to say their son or daughter is attending a community college,” he says.

Interestingly, there might be a good reason not to attend a prestigious school: you might be viewed as unwilling to ‘start at the bottom’ of a company, or just simply over-qualified. And as most CEOs spent a lot of time with one company, working through the ranks, it might be a drawback.

“A lot of people who earn degrees from tier-one universities and business schools aren’t willing to start at the bottom of a huge company” and spend years scaling layers of management and hoping to reach the top, says Richard Tedlow, a business historian at Harvard Business School.

What About No Degree at All?

It’s true that some CEOs out there actually dropped out of college to pursue their ideas and businesses. Bill Gates quit Harvard to start Microsoft. One case in point is Steve Jobs, who dropped out of Reed College in Oregon to go work for Atari, and then to start Apple. However, this is of course the rare success story; many more people who drop out of college never make it as far as Steve Jobs, and even he had a long struggle to get anywhere, stating that dropping out “wasn’t romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room so I slept on the floor of friends’ rooms and returned Coke bottles…to buy food.”

However the take-home message seems to be: make the best educational decision for your budget and goals, as an Ivy League degree does not promise success. A student can achieve the same level of success with a degree from a state or small school, its all about the individual that makes the difference.

Leave a comment