- Warren Buffett says he does not factor the educational background of any chief executive who is running a company that Berkshire Hathaway may acquire. He also thinks that much of a person's business talent comes from nature, not nurture.
Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett doesn’t care where his CEOs have gone to school, if any at all.
In his 2025 annual letter to shareholders released on Saturday, he recalled Berkshire’s 2005 acquisition of RV manufacturer Forest River. It was helmed by the late Pete Liegl, who received his MBA from Western Michigan University.
“During the next 19 years, Pete shot the lights out,” Buffett said. “No competitor came close to his performance.”
He added that there are very few owners or managers like Liegl, but his example prompted Buffett to opine on educational credentials.
“One further point in our CEO selections: I never look at where a candidate has gone to school. Never!” he said. “Of course, there are great managers who attended the most famous schools. But there are plenty such as Pete who may have benefitted by attending a less prestigious institution or even not bothering to finish school.”
Buffett cited Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates as an example of success without an esteemed degree.
Gates famously dropped out of Harvard after just three semesters to start Microsoft in 1975. The decision served him well, and he became a billionaire by age 31. He is now worth an estimated $108.6 billion, according to Forbes.
“Look at my friend, Bill Gates, who decided that it was far more important to get underway in an exploding industry that would change the world than stick around for a parchment that he could hang on the wall,” Buffett wrote.
In another example of someone who didn’t attend Penn’s Wharton School, Northwestern’s Kellogg, or Stanford’s graduate school of business, he highlighted Ben Rosner, who built a $44 million retail clothing business that Buffett acquired in 1967.
“Ben never went past 6th grade,” step-granddaughter Jessica Toonkel told Buffett.
For his part, Buffett said he went to three universities—the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Penn’s Wharton School, and Columbia University—and believes in lifelong learning.
“I’ve observed, however, that a very large portion of business talent is innate with nature swamping nurture,” he added. “Pete Liegl was a natural.”
