Aggies Prominent Among Fortune 100 CEOs

Two major national publications, U.S. News & World Report and Newsweek, are out with new reports showing Texas A&M University graduates faring quite well in the marketplace, with the U.S. News story indicating no university in the country has more current Fortune 100 CEOs than Texas A&M.

In its article headlined “Colleges That Gave Fortune 500 CEOs Their Start,” U.S. News leads its online list with five universities that it reports each have three graduates now serving as chief executive officers of Fortune 100 companies — Texas A&M and four Ivy League schools: Cornell, Harvard, Princeton and Yale.

Each year Fortune magazine ranks the largest 500 U.S. publicly traded companies.

According to officials at The Association of Former Students, the Texas A&M alumni organization, the three Texas A&M graduates who head Fortune 100 companies are: Bruce Broussard, a 1984 graduate in accounting, CEO of Humana; David Cordani, a 1988 graduate in accounting, CEO of Cigna Corp., and Greg Garland, a 1980 graduate in chemical engineering, CEO of Phillips 66.

Texas A&M is one of 10 institutions cited in the Newsweekarticle headlined “The Top Ten Public Schools For Getting A Well Paid Job.” The article originally appeared on the Brookings Institution website and was written by Siddharth Kulkarni of Brookings and Jonathan Rothwell of the Metropolitan Policy Program.

“Texas A&M is known for offering extraordinarily high-quality degree programs as well as leadership development opportunities through over 1,000 student-run organizations,” said Texas A&M President Michael K. Young. “This foundation, in a culture infused with core values such as selfless service, integrity, excellence and respect, helps prepare our students to become leaders, as reflected in these findings. We are proud that some of our most prominent graduates are receiving this national and international attention.”

The two authors of the article appearing in Newsweek online provided some perspective concerning the institutions included in their list and the basis for inclusion.

“The list of the top 10 public schools includes such household names as Berkeley (University of California at Berkeley) and Texas A&M, but also some smaller schools that may not be well known outside their respective regions,” the two authors note.

Their underlying study focuses on “value added” aspects of actual median mid-career salaries for graduates compared to their predicted median mid-year salaries.
For Texas A&M graduates, the actual median mid-career salary was, on average, $97,700 –almost $25,000 more than the predicted $72,854.

The authors point out that most of the top public colleges cited for graduates earning higher-than-expected salaries have “technical orientation.” Texas A&M and California-Berkeley, however, are diversified comprehensive institutions, as are at least two others on their list, Georgia Institute of Technology and University of Massachusetts-Lowell.

Other schools on their list are State University of New York (SUNY) Maritime College, Virginia Military Institute, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Michigan Technology University, Colorado School of Mines and Oregon Institute of Technology.