The richest people in the world: what did they study?

According to Forbes, Elon Musk is currently the richest person in the world. Have you ever wondered what the super-rich like Musk studied to end up where they are today?

Elon Musk was born in South Africa in a family environment tainted by violence and, in high school, he had to suffer episodes of bullying. He started programming video games, a job that began when he was 9 years old. His mother, when she divorced his father, ended up moving to Canada, where Elon Musk began his studies.

Musk's main training was at the University of Pennsylvania. There he studied Economics and Physics on a scholarship. Later he began a master's degree at Stanford University but did not finish it. He then created his first company and began his brilliant career as an entrepreneur.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos studied at the very elitist Princeton University. Princeton is in the Ivy League, along with Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth College, Harvard, Pennsylvania and Yale.

He studied Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and graduated in 1986. After working on Wall Street and in a fiber optic company, he founded the online bookstore cadabra.com with his then-wife Mackenize in their garage in Seattle, which would later become Amazon.

What about Bernard Arnault, the owner of the French luxury empire  LVMH -Louis Vuitton and other brands? Where did he study?

Arnault is from the 1969 class of the École Polytechnique, a very prestigious and elitist French training centre.

Bill Gates belongs to this category of geniuses who dropped out of higher education before graduating. In his case, he left Harvard University in 1975 to found Microsoft.

His parents were very upset with that decision, but their dismay was surely lessened when they saw him become, at just 26 years old, a millionaire and a leading figure in twentieth-century technology. Interestingly, Bill Gates studied law and did not study any science degree.

Another gifted Harvard student who dropped out of school in 2005 is Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg was barely a year in class and when he created Facebook, he dropped out of college. Of course, some time later (as happened with Bill Gates) Harvard awarded him his degree.

Warren Buffet, the world's best investor, was educated at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Buffet expanded his studies at the University of Nebraska and also at Columbia.

The founder of Oracle, the world's leading digital solutions group, had a very modest childhood, born in the New York borough of the Bronx but soon moved to Chicago.

Ellison studied at the University of Illinois for two years, though his studies were interrupted due to the death of his adoptive mother, and then enrolled at the University of Chicago. He did not get to finish his degree as he immediately made the leap to technology and entrepreneurship.

Larry Page studied Computer Systems Engineering at the University of Michigan and Computer Science at Stanford.

At Stanford he met Sergei (or Sergey) Brin, with whom he would invent Google.

The father of the co-founder of Google was a mathematics professor who left the Soviet Union and went with his wife to the United States.

So, he trained his son scientifically and Sergey Brin studied mathematics and computers at the University of Maryland. But it would be at Stanford (where he went on a scholarship) where he would find the person with whom he would build the Google empire.

Where did one of India's richest men study? Mukesh Ambani started his studies at the University of Bombay.

The main shareholder of Reliance Industries (petrochemical, textile, telecommunications…) then expanded his business knowledge in the United States, specifically at Stanford.

Amancio Ortega is the story of an entrepreneur who began working as a child and who could not afford university studies. At the age of 14, he was working in a clothing store in A Coruña and in 1965 he created his own company to manufacture bathrobes.

Contrary to prevailing business theories, he decided that his company would combine sales, manufacturing and distribution efforts. And he won, turning Zara into a global empire.

The founder of Alibaba insisted on learning English since he was a child because he saw in that language a key to prosper in life. He would cycle to a hotel every day to talk to foreigners and improve his command of the English language.

When it was time to enter university, he had difficulties: he had to take the entrance exams four times to be a student at the Hangzhou Teacher's Institute (Hangzhou Normal University).

Francoise Bettencourt Meyers inherited the L'Oréal empire from her mother, the charismatic Liliane Bettencourt, and, in fact, little is known about this woman who shields her privacy and does not frequent parties or red carpets.

According to Globalny.biz, Francoise has a degree in international Jewish-Christian relations and the study of the genealogy of Greek mythology. The websites states she is also the author of a five-volume biblical study.  Francoise was educated at the elite Marymount International School in Neully-sur-Seine.

One of China's great fortune makers, a bottled water magnate, had to drop out of school at the age of 12 when the so-called Cultural Revolution broke out, leading the country into chaos during the last years of Mao's rule.

Zhong Shanshan's parents were victims of this revolutionary period and he had to learn how to earn a living. A self-made man.

The other great business director that Microsoft has had, and Ballmer has one of the largest fortunes in the world.

Ballmer studied Economics and Mathematics at Harvard and did a graduate degree in Business at Stanford.

Ma Huateng is the founder of Tencent Inc, the great Chinese Internet company.

This millionaire studied Computer Science at Shenzhen University.

The millionaire Carlos Slim graduated in Civil Engineering from the Autonomous University of Mexico. But his field was always business.

During his university studies he was already making investments and successful purchases.

Alice Walton is the heir to the Walmart empire, making her one of the richest women in the United States and the world.

Walton studied Business and Finance at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

The American tycoon and politician studied at Johns Hopkins University with a degree in Electrical Engineering.

However, Bloomberg would later became a true entrepreneur at Harvard Business School.

James Walton is an American businessman and heir to the fortune of Walmart. As of December 2022, Walton was the sixteenth-richest person in the world.

Jim is the chairman of the family's Arvest Bank, which today boasts assets of more than $20 billion. He obtained a bachelor of arts/science from the University of Arkansas in 1971.