One in five university graduates becomes a millionaire

With rising property prices over the last 30 years I can easily see how this has happened.

FWIW, my parents aren't University educated and their property, savings & pensions assets formally class them as millionaires.
 
pitchfork said:
True, I suppose a lot of graduates will have amassed a million in assets by the time they retire if you take into account their house, pension, savings, belongings etc.

But then I don't believe that to be correlated to education per se, prior to everyone and their mum doing a degree it would have been roughly the same proportion hitting upper management or having business holdings as well as a job in say middle management.

But we didn't just magic up all these jobs when graduates became a big thing - realistically these jobs always existed.

More a reflection of the job market and the expectation of employers rather than the successes of the education system.
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Good point, although the interesting statistic is that only 3% of people with no formal qualifications are millionaires in this study (compared with 20% for graduates). As you say though the job market has changed so that a lot more roles have a degree as a prerequisite, regardless of whether it's actually required to do the job or not.
 
This is a completely useless statistic. It is all because of property and inheritances. The fact that it disregards debt as well makes it especially useless.
 
inogen said:
Most of the people I grew up with went to University.

I don't know one that's a become a millionaire.

I certainly don't know any that went to mine. Perhaps my University was just crap.

So which University paid for this survey again?
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Chances are many may have. People who go to university tend to come from a slightly wealthier background, meaning you're more likely to inherit money.

Secondly, over a graduate career, you're likely to buy a house, invest in a pension etc. meaning that if you sold/cashed-in everything, you'd have £1 million. These figures also don't include mortgages, so presumably owning 10% of a £400 000 house and having a mortgage on the rest counts as owning a £400 000 house in this situation. It's entirely possible to be a millionaire living in a modest house and not on a particularly high income if you have some put away and some assets elsewhere
 
inogen said:
Most of the people I grew up with went to University.

I don't know one that's a become a millionaire.

I certainly don't know any that went to mine. Perhaps my University was just crap.

So which University paid for this survey again?
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I'm currently sat in a room where 50% of the people are millionaires. All of us went to uni. Admittedly there are only four of us and the millionairness is divided by age. Us younguns aren't and the two older ones are...

It's much like billionaires though, most billionaires don't have billions in cash, they own significant portions of a large company (see Bill gates and zuckerburg for examples). As said, own a house in the SE and have a reasonable pension pot and many older people will be paper millionaires.
 
inogen said:
Most of the people I grew up with went to University.

I don't know one that's a become a millionaire.

I certainly don't know any that went to mine. Perhaps my University was just crap.
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Perhaps your friends don't live in London/the South East. Property prices alone would likely contribute a significant chunk for say grads in their 40s 50s etc.., who bought a few decades ago.
 
Being a millionaire hardley means your rich nowadays. I live in a street full of them and the vast majority are just managers, head teachers, couple of footballers (who wreck their houses and no one wants to buy them), few small business owners and a dragon.
 
hughtrimble said:
They are often called the 'Fool's Gold Standard' in academic circles...
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Yeah, half the time it's research to support some policy the government already signed and sealed months ago. You can make statistics say whatever you want if you ask and omit the right questions - it's the oldest trick in the book of dodgey politics.
 
What it doesn't say is is that that figure only really applies to the 55-64 age bracket - in effect the right age to have ridden both the 80's boom and the 2000's house price bubble. A £100k house bought in 1980 and 40 years of final salary pension is a huge amount of "assets".

What the article also doesn't say is that 3% of <16's are millionaires already and 9% of 16-24's. This means roughly 6% of people are inherited or trust fund millionaires.

Additionally since <16's are not counted as "adults" the educational statics to not apply for them. If we assume 9% of graduates are already millionaires then it's only 11% or a 1 in 10 chance of a new grad ever becoming a millionaire - half what this article is portraying!

As an additional insult to injury there is no reference as to when they completed further education. Many people who don't have degrees do go on to do a masters or MBA later on in their career if they are aiming of "c-suite" level.
 
so how many non degree people go onto being millionaires?

I didnt read the article i hope it has more useful info than the blatently obvious when you factor in some of these things..

£500k house isnt hard... thats half way there. could have gotten plenty of those back in the good old days with an education and a higher paying job and mum and dads good guidance and connections.
 
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**** poor article to perhaps try and cause an argument for the rich/poor divide.

Most peoples net worth is a guess at best anyway.

Common sense should tell you this simply isn't true.

Doing quick research will tell you that there are over 12,000,000 graduates in the UK, and about 600,000 millionaires. That's already 1 in 20, and not all of those millionaires will be graduates.

I suspected he missed a '0' off and its closer to 1/50.

I know you can say that a lot of those graduates will be new graduates and haven't reached their potential... But 1/5.. come on..
 
Rotty said:
so if I buy 1 £1.1m house, put £100k down and borrow £1m then I'm a millionaire, mmmmmm :p
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I believe the report means that it doesn't deduct debts from your assets. Since, in this example, you only own 1/11th of the house, it only counts that portion towards your wealth.

So, your wealth for the purposes of this report is £100,000 (rather than -£900,000 or +£1.1mil).
 
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