To be a billionaire you need to think like a billionaire. It’s no secret that you’ve got to think big in order to make big things happen.
Billionaires control nearly 4% of the world’s wealth. The billionaire’s club is the most exclusive club on the planet. There is only one billionaire for every 3 million people in the world.
The good news is the club gets less exclusive every year. This year it added 155 new names to its members list. That’s according to Wealth-X, “the world’s leading ultra high net worth (UHNW) intelligence and prospecting firm with the largest collection of curated research on UHNW individuals, defined as those with net assets of US$30 million and above.”
Between 2013 and 2014, the share of billionaires who have fully inherited their wealth decreased to below 20%.
Wealth-X says despite “wealth transfers, most of today’s billionaires have partly or completely created their own fortunes.”
That means entrepreneurship is still a critical precondition for most people to achieve billionaire status.
According to the report, more than 48% of billionaires have founded or co-founded a business themselves. Which means getting the right kind of education may be key to locking down or securing that billion-dollar investment.
Wealth-X also included a list of the top 20 colleges around the world that produced the most billionaires in their report.
Despite the international repute and standing of these top-ranking, hallowed institutions of higher education, it is worth noting that only 16% of the world’s college-educated billionaires attended these schools; 84% did not. Today’s billionaires were awarded their bachelor’s degrees from over 700 different universities around the world. It is worth noting that the bulk of universities are located right here in the United States, which raises the question why there are so few African Americans in the billionaire’s club.
Check out the list of colleges on the next page.