Can-fab-ulously Rich
More Cambridge students become dollar millionaires than any other UK university (well almost…). HARRIET MARSDEN has the story.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young student in possession of a desire for wealth, must be in want of a good university degree.
Or at least, a university degree from the USA or the UK.
According to recent data compiled by Spear’s magazine and research company WealthInsight, the top ten millionaire-producing universities are either American or British.
Harvard tops the poll, with only two British universities coming in the top ten: Oxford and Cambridge. Depressingly, Oxford ranks at 6th, producing more millionaires than MIT(7), New York(8) and Cambridge who languish in 9th place. The University of Pennsylvania rounds off the top ten.
A bemused Selwyn English student commented “You mean people who go to expensive universities, that have lots of money and connections, then go on to earn more money? What? That doesn’t make sense to me …”
12 other British institutions rank in the top 200, including LSE,UCL, Bristol, Edinburgh and Leeds. 40 made the top 500.
When it comes to a specific subject, Engineers appear to be mining the most gold, edging out Law, Accounting, Finance and Business degrees for the top spot.
WealthInsight analyst Oliver Williams explains the reasons behind this conclusion:
“Few of these degrees turn out to be outright vocational; most engineering graduates, for example, are not engineers but entrepreneurs. The same goes for most law and politics graduates, who owe their fortunes not to practising their professions but climbing the ranks of the financial services sector.”
A Robinson Historian reasoned differently: “The failure of this poll to recognise the floods of job offers and high salaries all history students enjoy on graduation does invite serious questions about the methods employed by these researchers.”
If we can extract any advice for aspiring millionaires, therefore, it would be this: It doesn’t really matter what you study. It matters where you study, and how fast you ditch your degree (and values?) to enter the world of commerce and finance.
To earn money, you must work with money, apparently.