From education to employment

Open University produce 3rd most staff for global tech firms

@OpenUniversity produces the third-most graduates for the world’s largest tech companies, according to new research from @SHLglobal “Aspirational Academics“.

We researched the educational backgrounds of over 800,000 graduates to find out which universities lead the way in producing talent for the world’s largest tech companies, banks and newspapers.

Using LinkedIn, we calculated the number of graduates from each institution currently working at 17 of the world’s largest tech companies, including Apple, Facebook and Google. 

Almost 2,500 employees had Open University degrees, only Oxford and Cambridge had more.

Over 3,000 Cambridge graduates went on to work for tech giants, and were the most popular choice of graduate for Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft.

Tech Companies

Open University graduates most commonly went on to work for Microsoft of the five biggest tech companies. 212 OU graduates work there.

Rank University # of Graduates
1 University of Cambridge 3027
2 University of Oxford 2502
3 Open University 2475
4 London School of Economics 2245
5 University of Manchester 2168
6 London Business School 2005
7 University College London 1816
8 Imperial College London 1806
9 University of Edinburgh 1641
10 University of Leeds 1539

Our seedlist of tech companies with UK staff included:

  • Apple
  • Microsoft
  • Alphabet
  • Dell Technologies
  • IBM
  • Intel
  • HP
  • Facebook
  • Nvidia
  • Oracle
  • Adobe
  • Amazon
  • Samsung
  • Nintendo
  • Sony

Tech Giants

Cambridge graduates were the most popular choice for staff at Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft.

Amazon

  University # of Employees
1 University of Cambridge 466
2 London School of Economics 455
3 University of Oxford 368
4 University of Edinburgh 346
5 University of Manchester 335

Apple

  University # of Employees
1 University of Cambridge 266
2 University of Oxford 205
3 University of York 166
4 University of Manchester 164
5 University of Westminster 147

Facebook

  University # of Employees
1 University of Oxford 245
2 London School of Economics 243
3 University of Cambridge 225
4 University College London 156
5 Imperial College London 136

Google

  University # of Employees
1 University of Cambridge 699
2 University of Oxford 644
3 London School of Economics 592
4 University College London 381
5 Imperial College London 329

Microsoft

  University # of Employees
1 University of Cambridge 348
2 London Business School 239
3 University of Oxford 216
4 Open University 212
5 London School of Economics 192

Methodology

  • Our seed list for this study consists of 60 companies split across tech, finance and media. Our seed list of universities includes every university in the UK.
  • Using LinkedIn, we then calculated the number of graduates from each institution for each company.
  • For those companies with subsidiaries, we included the employees of those subsidiaries in our analysis.

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