Millionaires are more likely to hold a degree in engineering than any other course, according to a study of high-net-worth individuals – but the majority of these wealthy engineering graduates do not actually work as engineers.
The result comes from a database of 70,000 millionaires – defined as individuals with at least $1 million (€724 000) in investable assets, excluding their primary home – maintained by consultancy WealthInsight.
An MBA was the second most common degree among millionaires, followed by economics and law.
“You would expect to see a high number of scientific or financial degrees in the top ten, like engineering, commerce and accounting,” says Oliver Williams of WealthInsight. “Numerical degrees are a notable advantage when it comes to amassing a personal fortune.”
“But, interestingly, 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.”
American universities are the world leaders at producing millionaires, according to the WealthInsight database. Harvard University came top, followed by Stanford and the University of California. The only non-US universities in the top ten were Oxford and Cambridge from the UK.
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