NZ Entrepreneur Earns 12 Degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford

While most people celebrate one university graduation and move on, Jamie Beaton can't seem to stop collecting them.

The 31-year-old New Zealander now holds 12 advanced degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Stanford, Princeton, and seven other prestigious universities. His fields span mathematics, business, law, public policy, finance, education, international affairs, health policy, and journalism.

And he's currently working on number 13 at Brown University.

Beaton's academic journey started at King's College in Auckland, where he applied to 25 universities in his final year. All 25 accepted him.

He chose Harvard, graduating magna cum laude in 2016 with undergraduate and master's qualifications in applied mathematics and economics. From there, he earned an MBA and education degree at Stanford, a doctorate in public policy at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree at Yale.

His most recent achievement came in June when he completed a Master of Science in Journalism at Columbia. His thesis examined Winston Peters and the future of populist nationalism in New Zealand politics.

Remarkably, university hasn't been Beaton's full-time job. He co-founded education consultancy Crimson Education as a teenager and still serves as its chief executive, helping students worldwide navigate admissions to highly selective universities.

His extensive LinkedIn profile has become an internet sensation, spawning memes and earning him the nickname "the Thanos of LinkedIn." But Beaton insists he's not just collecting prestigious names.

"The first five degrees had a clear skill acquisition component to them," he told the New York Times. "Since then, it's really been about following different passions and curiosities."

Why This Inspires

Beaton's journey shows that learning doesn't have to stop after one degree or even five. His relentless curiosity proves that education can be a lifelong adventure, not just a checkbox on the way to a career.

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Sir John Key, who chairs Crimson Education and officiated Beaton's wedding, jokingly ranked him as New Zealand's second-most accomplished figure after Ernest Rutherford. "And I'm only saying that because it's hard to take it away from the guy who split the atom," Key said.

While working in India recently, Beaton was completing an end-of-semester project for his Brown data science degree. At his current pace, he could rival American Benjamin Bolger's 16 degrees by age 50 or Michael Nicholson's more than 30.

For Beaton, there's no final graduation day in sight, just more passions waiting to be explored.