For many captains of industry, university training is a primary rung within the climb to the pinnacle.
A have a look at the education of each CEO within the top one hundred of the Fortune 500 groups this yr shows a spread of various backgrounds. From their days as college students to their ascent to the top of corporate leadership and control, those executives have traveled numerous paths to attain the same heights.
Public and personal schools alike are properly represented some of the alma maters of the pinnacle 100. Ivy League and worldwide colleges also display up. That range is well contemplated within the CEOs of the top 10 agencies, with eight of the ten having attended public universities, one a product of an Ivy League college and every other graduating from a school outdoor the U.S.
C. Douglas McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart Inc., leads the pinnacle-ranked organization at the Fortune 500 listing. McMillan is a graduate of the University of Arkansas, in which he earned a Bachelor of Science in enterprise management.
Among the nice-known people on the annual listing is Berkshire Hathaway Inc. CEO Warren Buffett, who attended the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.Com Inc., a Princeton University graduate. Both Berkshire Hathaway and Amazon cracked the pinnacle 10 of Fortune 500 companies.
Several pinnacle CEOs additionally attended small private faculties. For instance, Michael C. Kaufmann of Cardinal Health Inc graduated from Ohio Northern University, and H. Lawrence Culp Jr. Of General Electric Co. Is an alum of Maryland’s Washington College.
While not one of the CEOs most of the top 10 of the Fortune 500 listing attended the equal university, a few within the pinnacle 100 share alma maters. For example, the heads of Exxon Mobil Corp., Phillips sixty-six Co., Humana Inc., And Cigna are all Texas A&M University—College Station graduates. Of colleges represented below, Texas A&M has the most graduates on the helm of the pinnacle fifth of the Fortune 500 list.
Common majors for the pinnacle CEOs consist of business administration, accounting, and economics, but science, generation, engineering and math fields also are nicely represented. Many of the CEOs with STEM majors graduated with levels in various areas of engineering.
A breakdown of the educational backgrounds of top CEOs compiled by using U.S. News following the discharge of Fortune 500’s listing of groups with the highest revenue shows that greater CEOs earned bachelor’s stages from global universities than Ivy League colleges. Of the top 100 CEOs at the listing, eleven graduated from worldwide establishments, and nine graduated from Ivy League universities. However, a few CEOs did cross directly to earn master’s ranges at Ivy League schools after completing an undergraduate diploma.
But not all CEOs took the same path to the pinnacle. Randall T. Jones Sr. Of Publix Super Markets Inc., for example, skipped college, at the same time as other enterprise leaders, which includes Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, dropped out of faculty.
The desk underneath shows common alma maters of CEOs representing the pinnacle one hundred businesses as unique with the aid of Fortune primarily based on sales. This information does now not include CEOs, along with Zuckerberg, who attended a college, however, did now not graduate.