The Educational Footprint of Corporate Executives

Unlike other professions, there has never been a regulatory body mandating a common education for business executives. Despite a robust body of research describing the educational attributes of executives, there is very little literature highlighting characteristics from a predictive-odds perspective. It would not seem unusual to learn that business is the major of greatest prevalence; yet, considering there are many more business majors each year than English majors is it truly the degree of choice for executives? What about choosing an elite private institution over a public university? This article explores the educational profile of over 1000 businessexecutives from Fortune 250 companies to assess the educational footprint of our nation’s top business leaders. Itserves not only as a longitudinal comparison with previous executive profiles but more importantly it adjusts for population effects to show the attributes with the greatest relative representation. Among the findings, degrees in business, engineering, economics, and mathematics are overrepresented at the undergraduate level, while business and law dwarf all others at the graduate level. Other majors have adequate representation but are more likely to be coupled with an advanced degree. Lastly, there is a higher relative representation of elite schools over public schools