30 Most Popular Degree Majors Studied by Millionaires - MBA Central (2023)

Academic betterment is an enriching pursuit in its own right, but for many students contemplating higher education, increased earning potential is also a key motivation. So which subjects are likely to yield the most money, longer term? Wealth management meets luxury lifestyle magazine Spear’s, together with wealth consultancy WealthInsight, recently compiled data on 70,000 millionaires across the globe to ascertain what degrees they studied and at which universities. “The top subjects,” said Josh Spero, editor of Spear’s, “are those which encourage new and smart thinking, whether technical or financial. But it’s also no surprise to find that the brightest people… often leave their degrees behind and go into high finance to seek their fortune.” Here we take a look at the 30 disciplines that have produced the most members of the millionaires’ club.

30. Biochemistry

Driven to try to identify a cure for his twin brother’s cardiomyopathy – a degenerative disease that affects the heart muscle – actor Ashton Kutcher signed up for school at the University of Iowa in 1996 and hoped to major in biochemical engineering. Kutcher’s academic days were short-lived, however, and after coming out on top in a local modeling competition, he dropped out to kick-start a modeling career, strutting his stuff in New York, Paris and Milan. Soon afterwards, Kutcher turned to acting, and looking back, it was probably the correct decision. Biochemistry students who did manage to graduate include singer Milo Aukerman from punk band the Descendents – who holds a Ph.D. in the subject from the University of Wisconsin–Madison – and business executive Christine Poon. The former worldwide chairman of Johnson & Johnson’s Pharmaceuticals Group, Poon was compensated over $10 million in 2008 alone before stepping down from her position the following year.

29. Art

Arguably the trickiest part about making money as an artist, as Vincent Van Gogh would probably attest, is to do it while still alive. The Dutch master is rumored to have only ever managed to sell one solitary painting – for the sum of 400 francs, equivalent to roughly $1,600 in 2011 – throughout his life. However, Van Gogh’s posthumous fame has seen at least three of his works sell for more than $100 million each, at today’s equivalent costs, and various other pieces of his work have been snapped up at multi-million-dollar prices. Heeding all this are Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, who have put their fine art degrees to sensible monetized use and in 2013 both ranked in the top five of the world’s wealthiest artists, with net worths of $350 million and $100 million respectively.

28. Agribusiness/Agricultural Studies

In order to fulfill the demands of a rapidly growing population, the food industry will need to find ways to boost its productivity by some 70 percent over the next four decades; that’s according to a 2013 article from Britain’s The Guardian. Agriculture and agribusiness graduates are therefore in increasing demand to meet some of the challenges that this large step-up in output presents. Fortunately, there is also money to be made in the world of agriculture – as the reasonable number of millionaires the subject area produces perhaps suggests, going from WealthInsight’s Spear’s magazine’s data. In any case, even graduates in these or related subjects who don’t ultimately go into the field can still be well remunerated. Chevron CEO and chairman John S. Watson – who left the University of California, Davis with a bachelor’s in agricultural economics in 1978 – draws a salary of over $32 million.

27. Architecture

The most obvious and natural progression from obtaining a degree in architecture is to become an architect. That said, if your first name was “Weird,” you might be forgiven for looking at other options. Grammy-winning comedy musician “Weird Al” Yankovic, real name Alfred Yankovic, got his architecture degree from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1980 but chose a more satirical path to attaining millionaire status. Still, architecture’s loss is musical parody’s gain. On the other hand, Norman Foster – described in 2008 as “the richest architect in the world by a very big margin” by website Skyscraper News – took the direct route after earning his master’s in the subject from the Yale School of Architecture in 1962. Foster has a current fortune in the region of $250 million.

26. Journalism

In a 2012 New York Times graphic entitled “The Top 1 Percent: What Jobs Do They Have?” it was said that 7,282 journalists in America are in that disproportionately wealthy category. Hence, despite journalism’s extremely competitive nature and saturated industry, there is evidently money to be made in the field. That’s not to say that alternative paths for journalism degree holders can’t also reap rewards, however. A noteworthy graduate who has chosen another vocation is actor and millionaire Denzel Washington, who completed his studies at Fordham University with a bachelor’s in drama and journalism in 1977. Another notable figure is Survivor: Micronesia winner Parvati Shallow, who majored in journalism, getting her degree from the University of Georgia in 2004. Shallow gained instant entry into the millionaires’ club after winning the reality TV show’s $1 million prize in 2008.

25. Communication

With a degree as broad in scope as communication, graduates can find themselves on pretty divergent employment paths. Notable communication degree holders who also managed to achieve considerable wealth include late actor James Gandolfini, who graduated from Rutgers University in 1982 with a bachelor’s in communication studies; film director Spike Lee, who attained his B.A. in mass communications from Morehouse College in 1979; and The Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson, who earned his undergraduate communications degree from Washington State University in 1972. However, top of this particular pile in the wealth stakes is radio and TV personality Howard Stern, who completed his studies at Boston University’s College of Public Communication in 1976 and now has an annual salary approaching $100 million and can boast a net worth of $500 million.

24. Pharmacy

AMC crime drama Breaking Bad may have put illegal drug production and dealing front and center in the public consciousness, but those who enroll for pharmacy degrees are likely to be considering a career in dispensing substances of a less questionable nature. Given the investment of time and money it takes to become a pharmacist – a few years of undergraduate learning, as many as four years of doctoral study and sometimes up to two years of residency – it’s to be expected that remuneration packages are correspondingly high. Information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the average salary received by pharmacists in the U.S. was $116,670 in 2012. What’s more, according to the bureau, the pharmacist job market is predicted to increase by 14 percent by 2022, meaning that for those who put in the study hours, the prospects of finding work are also reasonably good.

23. Chemical Engineering

Cindy Crawford may not be the first name that springs to mind when one thinks of chemical engineering – if indeed any one particular name does spring to mind – but the former supermodel did in fact take up the subject, at Northwestern University in 1984. After winning an academic scholarship, Crawford dropped out following just one term – though to pursue what turned out to be a stratospheric career in front of the lens. One notable chemical engineer who did manage to complete his studies is Gore-Tex inventor Robert “Bob” Gore. Gore achieved his chemical engineering Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1963 and now, with an estimated net worth of $800 million, has the honor of being the wealthiest individual in the state of Delaware.

22. Geology

Ranking second place on Forbes’ list of the wealthiest U.S. presidents of all time, Herbert Hoover was annually raking in the equivalent of $2.5 million in today’s money almost 20 years before he was sworn in in 1929. Hoover was also a geology degree holder, having obtained his qualifications in 1895 from Stanford University. Incidentally, Hoover additionally laid claim to being the first ever Stanford student – having supposedly been the first to spend a night in the university dormitory after enrolling in the institution’s maiden year of 1891. Hoover’s geological background led him to the mining industry, where he quickly rose through the ranks to find his fortune. He clearly had an affinity with money, though, once famously saying, “If a man has not made a million dollars by the time he is forty, he is not worth much.”

21. English

According to Newsweek, English is the seventh most useless major of them all, as determined by factors such as recent graduate employment and earnings. That said, judging from Spear’s magazine and WealthInsight’s research, the subject yields a reasonable share of millionaires, so perhaps there are actually a fair few less worthwhile degrees out there – at least in the high wealth production stakes. In any case, literacy is an invaluable commodity. Graduates who have managed to transfer their English degrees to millions of dollars include Stephen King, who finished his studies at the University of Maine with an English B.A. in 1970 and can now boast a net worth of some $400 million; and 1969 Loyola University English lit graduate and fellow novelist Tom Clancy, whose fortune was valued at $300 million prior to his death. Then there’s businessman-turned-politician Mitt Romney, who left Brigham Young University with a top honors bachelor’s degree in English in 1971 and is today worth around $250 million.

20. Philosophy

Despite being seen as a largely non-vocational subject, philosophy manages to set its share of graduates on the path to high net worth. As a 2014 Huffington Post article points out, in “both the business and tech worlds… philosophy has proved itself to be not only relevant but often the cornerstone of great innovation.” One notable innovator is Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, who earned a master’s in philosophy from Cambridge University in 1998 before turning his attention to facilitating photo sharing. Another notable figure is investment and business magnate George Soros, who gained a Ph.D. in philosophy from the London School of Economics in 1954 and in 2014 placed 29th on Forbes’ The World’s Billionaires list.

19. Biology

The study of living organisms is an important endeavor in its own right, but it’s perhaps a reasonable assumption that many of the millionaires biology degrees produce go on to make their money in different fields – unless, that is, such graduates are among the fortunate annual recipients of the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. Dexter Holland, rhythm guitarist and frontman of pop punk band The Offspring, graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.S. in biology and a master’s in molecular biology but inexplicably opted for a career as a rock millionaire instead. Perhaps even more inexplicably, in 1995 Holland was quoted as saying, “I won’t wanna play music when I’m forty, I’d rather be a professor at a university” – though his musical career is still going strong eight years after that deadline. All the same, recently Holland has gone back to school to pursue a doctorate, co-authoring a paper dealing with microRNA in HIV genomes that was published in March 2013.

18. Chemistry

Moore’s Law is an influential observation in the realm of computer hardware that asserts, in basic terms, that processing strength increases twofold every two years. Interestingly, though, its author, Gordon Moore, has an academic background not in computer science but in chemistry, having gained his doctorate in the subject from Caltech in 1954. Still, Moore went on to find his fortune in computers and in 1968 co-founded Intel (then known as NM Electronics), where he is now chairman emeritus. Moore’s current net worth of some $6.1 billion places him a respectable 240th on Forbes’ 2014 list of The Richest People on the Planet. Elsewhere, chemistry graduate-turned-actor and millionaire Dolph Lundgren chose to let his biceps do the talking instead, although none of the movie one-liners he’s delivered have been enshrined as computing laws just yet.

17. Psychology

It doesn’t require a huge leap of the imagination to see how an academic understanding of human behavior and mental function might translate into a general competitive edge in the pursuit of money – and the roster of millionaire celebrities with psychology degrees is certainly eclectic. Film and TV producer Jerry Bruckheimer obtained a B.S. majoring in psychology from the University of Arizona in 1967; Playboy mogul and smoking jacket proponent Hugh Hefner gained a bachelor’s majoring in psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1947; and Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman earned her undergraduate psychology stripes from Harvard in 2003.