today on Forbes top colleges for billionaires Robert Craft the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots says quote I owe Colombia a lot. Craft announced in April he would stop donating to his alma mater amid the student protests spreading across college campuses. He says quote Columbia gave me a full scholarship when I really needed it and I'm loyal but the protesters are not held accountable for their words or actions and the university is letting them get away with it. Colombia might lose Millions from Craft's decision considering he has given at least $8 million to the university over his lifetime. Luckily the New York City school has plenty of other deep-pocketed alumni including cable magnate Roco ciso who tells Forbes he doesn't plan to sit on his wallet. He says quote I think now is the time to give more not less as alumni and wealthy people we should commit ourselves to help Colombia grow. This is a school that gave me money and opportunity and Craft are two of 11 billionaires who

got an undergraduate degree from Colombia making it one of the most elite schools in the world. When it comes to educating billionaires, America's richest people hail from colleges all across the country, from small liberal arts schools like Hobart and William Smith colleges where Fidelity Investments CEO Abigail Johnson studied art history, to major public research universities like Indiana University Bloomington where Mark Cuban graduated with a business degree. But a quarter of the 8313 American citizens on Forbes' billionaires list got their undergraduate degree from one of just a dozen schools. This elite group includes two major California private colleges, two State schools, and seven of the eight Ivies, including the University of Pennsylvania, by far the school with the most billionaire undergraduates with 36. About two-thirds of them studied at the esteemed Wharton School, the business school at UPenn. Such deep-pocketed alumni networks can mean big bucks for a school's endowment and big benefits for students. Of course, fundraising from the ultra-wealthy can also place schools' budgets

at the whims of a small group of donors. When billionaires are displeased with how a school is run, they might just pull their checkbooks altogether. Craft isn't the only wealthy donor halting his giving these days. So are others such as hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman, real estate investor Barry Stern, and Len Blotnik, who got his wealth from both chemicals and the music industry. Here are the top three universities with the most American billionaire undergraduate alumni. Not that you have to go to college to get ultra-rich. Just ask dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg and designer Tom Ford or never-went like Taylor Swift and LeBron James. At number three is Harvard University with 28 billionaire alums. Harvard College has educated Natalie Portman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, six US presidents, and more than two dozen current US billionaires. That includes Citadel's Ken Griffin, who installed a satellite dish on his dorm roof to get real-time stock quotes, and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, just as famous as the school's.

graduates. However, are its dropouts. Bill Gates, for example, left to launch Microsoft in 1975, while Mark Zuckerberg left in 2004 to pursue Facebook full-time. At number two is Stanford University with 30 billionaire alums. The Silicon Valley school has helped mold plenty of tech billionaires, from Andy Fang and Stanley Tang, who were students when they co-founded food delivery app DoorDash, to Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, two fraternity brothers who created the project that became Snapchat. At number one is the University of Pennsylvania with 36 billionaire alums. The Philadelphia institution educated the likes of Tesla's Elon Musk, former President Donald Trump, and Apollo co-founders Mark Rowan and Josh Harris. Penn is also in the blood of the heirs to the Estée Lauder fortune, with Leonard Lauder, William Lauder, Aaron Lauder, and Ronald Lauder all attending over the span of four decades. For full coverage and to see the whole list, check out Richard J. Chang's piece on Forbes.com. This is Kieran Meadows from

The Top Colleges That Have Produced The Most Billionaires

Forbes highlights success through the lens of business, entrepreneurship, wealth, investing and leadership with a focus on the people shaping our world.

Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
 
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com

The Top Colleges That Have Produced The Most Billionaires

The Top Colleges That Have Produced The Most Billionaires

Scripts