Some chief executives have openly questioned whether a college degree still sets students up for success in the workforce. Lloyd Blankfein, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, is pushing back against that narrative.

Blankfein has seen the power of a strong college education firsthand. The billionaire financier was born into public housing in Brooklyn and shared a bedroom in his family's small New York City apartment with his grandmother or his sister until he left for college. His high school was on the brink of shutting down at the time, Blankfein told CBS earlier this year—but the teenager buckled down, studied hard, became class valedictorian, and earned admission to Harvard University at just 16 years old.

That acceptance became the launchpad for a celebrated finance career that included a 12-year run as CEO of Goldman Sachs, a tenure that spanned the 2008 global financial crisis.

Five decades later, Blankfein still regards schooling as the great wealth equalizer, even as artificial intelligence threatens to eliminate white-collar roles at a dizzying pace.

"I think education is the real accelerator for most people into the middle and upper classes," Blankfein told CBS.

Blankfein says college helps make workers 'complete people'

Higher education has long been lauded as the surest path to success, but some prominent leaders now encourage young workers to skip college altogether.

Peter Thiel, the cofounder of Palantir and PayPal—and himself a Stanford University alumnus—has been particularly outspoken, even offering young entrepreneurs $200,000 grants through his Thiel Fellowship, a program he launched in 2010, to abandon the "corrupt institution" of higher education and "build new things" instead.

Blankfein pushed back against the tech mogul's rhetoric, advising the next generation of movers and shakers to set themselves up for success by going to college.

"I strongly disagree with the technology investor Peter Thiel," Blankfein wrote in an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, Streetwise, shared with Vanity Fair earlier this year. "To 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—the kind of person other people want to engage with."

The former Goldman Sachs leader, an alumnus 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 easy ride—Blankfein wrote that he "survived" the experience more than he enjoyed it—but it was still "the best place to have gone."

He might have missed out on that essential growth, integral to his later career success, had he passed up the college experience altogether.

"Your undergraduate years are your best opportunity to make yourself uncomfortable in a way that can help make more curious and interesting," he continued in the book.

Other CEOs agree: college builds essential skills, including the liberal arts

While some leaders with elite college degrees criticize higher education, others, like Blankfein, credit their schooling for their current success. And because AI threatens the white-collar careers that degrees have traditionally led into, the debate carries real weight for the students now weighing whether college remains worth it.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says his alma mater, Brown University, prepared him for the corner office with a diverse skill set at the ready. Engineering taught the ride-hailing executive "how to solve complex problems," while the liberal arts "just captured my heart."

"One of my secrets is—really, I do give Brown credit for this—this balanced education that I kind of stumbled on," Khosrowshahi said during a panel at the Ivy League school last year. "Learning all of the…really 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're in a leadership position."

And despite suggestions that the traditional college pathway is falling out of favor as AI takes over workforces, some leaders remain optimistic. Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told Fortune last year that "education will be completely revolutionized" for the better thanks to technological innovation, creating new jobs that have never been seen before.

Daniela Amodei, cofounder of Anthropic, is adamant that the college humanities track will not be cast aside in a tech-driven work landscape. In fact, she argues, the discipline will remain critical to innovation at even the largest AI businesses.

"I actually think studying the humanities is going to be more important than ever," Amodei said in an interview with ABC News earlier this year. "The ability to have critical thinking skills and learn how to interact with other people will be more important in the future, rather than less."

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on March 10, 2026.