{"id":159311,"date":"2026-03-10T16:14:37","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/159311\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T16:14:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:14:37","slug":"former-goldman-sachs-ceo-got-into-harvard-at-16-growing-up-in-brooklyn-public-housing-he-still-says-college-is-the-best-ticket-to-the-middle-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/159311\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Goldman Sachs CEO got into Harvard at 16, growing up in Brooklyn public housing\u2014he still says college is the best ticket to the middle class"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blankfein has witnessed the power of a strong college education firsthand. The billionaire finance leader was born into public housing in Brooklyn, sharing a bedroom in his small New York City apartment with his grandmother or sister until he went off to college. At the time, his high school was on the brink of shutting down, Blankfein told CBS<\/a>\u2014but the then-teenager battened down the hatches, studied hard, became class valedictorian<\/a>, and got into Harvard University<\/a> at just 16 years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was the launchpad to his illustrious career in finance, including a 12-year reign at Goldman Sachs.<\/p>\n

Fast forward five decades, and Blankfein still believes schooling is the great wealth equalizer, even as AI threatens to swipe white-collar roles<\/a> at a dizzying pace.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think education is the real accelerator for most people into the middle and upper classes,\u201d Blankfein told CBS.<\/p>\n

Blankfein says college helps make workers a \u2018complete person\u2019<\/p>\n

Higher education has long been lauded as the best path to success, but some leaders are encouraging budding workers to skip college altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Palantir<\/a> and PayPal<\/a> cofounder Peter Thiel<\/a>\u2014a Stanford University alumni\u2014has been particularly outspoken, even offering young<\/a> entrepreneurs $200,000 grants to ditch the \u201ccorrupt institution\u201d of higher education and \u201cbuild new things\u201d with his Thiel Fellowship<\/a>. Blankfein hit back at the tech mogul\u2019s rhetoric, advising the next generation of movers and shakers to set themselves up for success by going to college.<\/p>\n

\u201cI strongly disagree with the technology investor Peter Thiel,\u201d Blankfein wrote in an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, Streetwise, shared with<\/a> Vanity Fair last month. \u201cTo succeed in a career, you have to know the technical minutiae of your field, of course. But you also need to be a complete person\u2014the kind of person other people want to engage with.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ex-Goldman Sachs leader, an alumni of both Harvard University and Harvard Law School, says the elite college nurtured his confidence, writing skills, love of history, and engagement with current events. It was no cake walk\u2014Blankfein wrote that he \u201csurvived\u201d the experience more than he enjoyed it. But it was still \u201cthe best place to have gone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Blankfein might have missed out on that essential growth, integral to his career success, if he\u2019d passed up on the college experience altogether.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour undergraduate years are your best opportunity to make yourself uncomfortable in a way that can help make you more curious and interesting,\u201d he continued in his book.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other CEOs agree: college builds essential skills, including the liberal arts<\/p>\n

While some leaders with elite college degrees are bashing higher education, others like Blankfein are crediting their education to their current success.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Uber<\/a> CEO Dara Khosrowshahi<\/a> says his alma mater, Brown University, prepared him to take<\/a> the corner office with a diverse skillset at the ready. Engineering taught the ride-hailing leader \u201chow to solve complex problems,\u201d while liberal arts \u201cjust captured my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my secrets is\u2014really, I do give Brown credit for this\u2014this balanced education that I kind of stumbled on,\u201d Khosrowshahi said during a panel at<\/a> the Ivy League college last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLearning all of the\u2026really important basics of engineering, but then marrying that with liberal arts, that really taught me to communicate in a compelling way, which is an absolute necessity when you\u2019re in a leadership position.\u201d<\/p>\n

And despite whisperings that the traditional college pathway is on the outs as AI takes over workforces, some leaders are optimistic. Databricks<\/a> CEO Ali Ghodsi<\/a> told Fortune last year<\/a> that \u201ceducation will be completely revolutionized\u201d for the better thanks to tech innovations, creating new jobs never seen before.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And Anthropic<\/a> cofounder Daniela Amodei<\/a> is adamant the college<\/a> humanities track won\u2019t be tossed aside in a tech-driven work landscape. In fact, the discipline will continue to be critical to innovation at even the largest AI businesses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually think studying the humanities is going to be more important than ever,\u201d Amodei said in an interview<\/a> with ABC News last month. \u201cThe ability to have critical thinking skills and learn how to interact with other people will be more important in the future, rather than less.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blankfein has witnessed the power of a strong college education firsthand. The billionaire finance leader was born into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[3079,98,100,99,288,51508,51509,3969,1692,67,1603,65694,179,22555,65695,10167,9,24,63,50467,3577,52988,10780,65696,4692],"class_list":["post-159311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-advice","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-business","tag-career-advice","tag-careers","tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","tag-colleges-and-universities","tag-education","tag-finance","tag-goldman-sachs-group","tag-harvard-university","tag-learning","tag-lloyd-blankfein","tag-middle-class","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-palantir","tag-personal-finance","tag-peter-thiel","tag-school","tag-skills","tag-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}