Which universities produce and attract the world’s wealthiest graduates?
Which universities have the most ultra wealthy alumni? How do the top educational institutions in the US compare to elite universities worldwide? Which industries dominate the focus of these wealthy alumni, and what motivates wealthy alumni to donate to educational causes?
The value of wealthy and influential alumni to an alma mater goes far beyond showcasing the quality of education. Graduates offer their alma maters invaluable resources, including major gifts, corporate partnerships, knowledge transfer, and exclusive networking opportunities. In today’s competitive global education market, institutions that can harness these powerful university alumni networks stand to gain significantly.
Alumni profiles and connections: key insights for alumni relations offices looking to secure major gifts from UHNW alumni
At a time of financial challenges, attracting donations from wealthy alumni is a critical focus for today’s private and public universities. Large-scale giving from individuals can make a transformative impact for initiatives from capital campaigns to endowment fundraising, making it more important than ever to understand the unique characteristics of a university’s alumni. By leveraging the unique insights of each donor cohort (wealthy NextGen, wealthy tech-focused graduates, and wealthy female graduates) found in this report, fundraisers can craft best-in-class donor prospect and engagement strategies.
Additionally, institutions that can engage wealthy alumni with a high affinity for philanthropy are positioned to create lasting change in both education and society. Fortunately, a university’s network of connections to the wealthy and influential alumni and non-alumni is often much larger than it appears. This network includes the professional and personal connections of its board of trustees, deans, academics, major donors and staff (among others) to wealthy alumni and large numbers of senior decision makers. Contacts are powerful, so it is essential that those in alumni relations make these count when prospecting and engaging wealthy and influential alumni.
Altrata’s University Alumni 2025 – the second of its kind to be published by Altrata – explores the universities with the most ultra wealthy alumni and senior executives at the world’s largest companies.
Additional insight comes from a deep dive into specific wealthy alumni groups, the prevalence of MBAs among senior executives at the world’s largest companies and the critical role of universities’ connections to influential alumni and non-alumni.
The report begins by emphasizing the mutual benefits to be gained from nurturing and maintaining a strong relationship between an institution and its network of successful graduates. We then examine in detail the leading US and non-US universities, ranked by the number of ultra wealthy alumni (those with a net worth in excess of $30m). We broaden our analysis to those with a net worth of $5m+, highlighting how the industry focus (and wealth creation) of wealthy alumni has changed over time, and profiling three specific alumni cohorts with a track record of philanthropic giving to educational causes: NextGen (Millennials and Generation Z); those with a tech sector focus; and women. While there are shared similarities, the unique characteristics of each alumni group is revealed through these distinct archetypes.
2025 UHNW university alumni rankings
One key insight within University Alumni 2025 is that Harvard University leads for the estimated number of ultra wealthy alumni (individuals with $30m+ in net worth). Harvard has an estimated 18,000 UHNW alumni, equivalent to some 4% of the global ultra wealthy population.
Harvard University is ranked number one for the largest number of ultra wealthy alumni, followed by the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, Columbia University, and New York University, respectively.
Leading the rankings of the universities outside of the United States with the largest number of ultra wealth alumni is the University of Oxford. Moving down the rankings is the University of Cambridge, followed by the National University of Singapore, followed by INSEAD, and the London School of Economics in the top fifth spot among non-US universities.
Other key insights explored within Altrata’s University Alumni Report include:
- Technology as the primary sector of focus of wealthy alumni has risen rapidly in the past two decades. Technology is the primary industry for a 10th of all wealthy alumni who graduated in the past 20 years, almost double the number of those who graduated more than 20 years ago.
- Some 29% of Fortune Global 500 senior executives has an MBA degree. This rises to 33% of chief executive officers (CEOs) and 40% of chief financial officers (CFOs). Harvard University is again the clear leader, followed by the University of Pennsylvania.
- Millennial and Gen Z, tech-focused and female wealthy graduates with a high affinity for giving to the education sector have unique and particular traits. Banking and finance is, by far, the main industry focus among younger wealthy.
The University Alumni Report 2025 offers a unique insight into the university backgrounds and philanthropic trends of the wealthy and senior executives. It is essential reading for education institutions and other organizations looking to prospect for and engage with this group of highly influential individuals to secure more major gifts and fuel endowment fundraising efforts.
Methodology
This report leverages three of Altrata’s unique products: the Wealth-X Database, the world’s most extensive collection of curated research and intelligence on the wealthy; BoardEx’s Global Leadership Database, which covers board and non-board members, C-suite executives, senior leaders and professional advisers; and RelSci‘s relationship mapping database of influential decision makers.
For our wealthy alumni analysis, we studied the wealthy with $5m+ and ultra wealthy across the globe, dividing our analysis of the latter into US and non-US universities. For our senior executive alumni analysis, we studied the board members and those on the leadership teams at Fortune Global 500 companies. For our analysis of connections between universities and influential alumni, we studied the board of trustees and alumni among a sample of universities with financial endowments of between $1bn and $10bn.
The full methodology for the University Alumni Report 2025 can be found at the end of the report.
About the author
Maya Imberg is the Head of Thought Leadership and Analytics at Altrata. She is responsible for spearheading the company’s thought leadership efforts and overseeing its analytics and predictive modeling services commissioned by clients. She joined Altrata’s Wealth-X in 2016 as Director of Custom Research responsible for secondary research, data analytics and branded content. Maya has over fifteen years of experience in research, spanning market research, macroeconomics and financial services. Prior to joining Wealth-X, Maya held a variety of consultant and economist roles at the Economist Intelligence Unit and spent a number of years working for Datamonitor’s Financial Services practice. Maya holds an undergraduate and MSc degree in economics and comparative politics from the University of Pennsylvania and London School of Economics respectively.