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Jamie Beaton, a New Zealand-born Harvard, Stanford, Yale and Oxford graduate, is collecting master's degrees at a rapid pace while running Crimson Education, a college admissions counselling service valued at more than $US600 million.
Jamie Beaton, a 31-year-old New Zealander, has already earned degrees from Harvard, Stanford, Yale and Oxford and is now pursuing a master's in data science at Brown University.
He runs Crimson Education, a college admissions counselling service valued at more than $US600 million ($840 million). The scale of his academic record became clear to Lisa Belkin, an adjunct professor at Columbia University's journalism school, early in the autumn semester of the 2025-26 academic year. She noticed one of her students had yet to show up for class and reached out to a dean. Belkin avoids combing the internet for information about her students and knew nothing about Beaton.
He replied apologetically, saying he had mixed up his schedule. He was in New Zealand teaching entrepreneurship at the University of Auckland but would be back in New York the next week. Beaton graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2016, picking up a master's degree in applied mathematics along the way. He then collected an MBA from Stanford University and a law degree from Yale University.
That was followed by a doctor of philosophy in public policy from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar, all before age 28. Attending classes remotely and in person, he earned additional master's degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, King's College London and Tsinghua University in Beijing. A week after his apologetic reply, Beaton made his first appearance in Belkin's classroom. As the semester went on, he did not miss an assignment.
Belkin said he was a joy to get to know but called it the weirdest relationship she has ever had with a student. The 168-centimetres-tall Beaton has gone to the head of a rarefied class of perpetual students. In his final year of high school he took more than twice the number of required courses and was admitted to 25 universities, including Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
If he continues collecting advanced degrees at such a swift pace, he will surpass Benjamin B. Bolger, who has racked up 16 at age 50. He might even beat Michael Nicholson, an octogenarian forever scholar with more than 30 degrees to his name. Away from his studies, Beaton has become a player in college admissions counselling. His clients pay between $US30,000 and $US200,000 for a multiyear program designed to enhance their children's chances of getting into top universities.
His own academic background has raised questions. How can this be real? Is it education as performance art? An elaborate marketing ploy for his business?
Beaton says the truth is more prosaic. He said the first five degrees had a clear skill acquisition component. Since then, it has really been about following different passions and curiosities. The two met on a recent afternoon in Manhattan, not far from where he lives with his wife, Priscilla Beaton.
His day was crowded with appointments, including an evening event at the Harvard Club in Midtown where he and his Crimson Education colleagues would hold a meet-and-greet with potential clients. He said he loves the action and a jam-packed day. It is good fun. So many things are good fun to Beaton.
An abridged list includes helping students decode the college admissions process, studying the viability of distressed companies, grabbing snacks in the Amtrak cafe car, reading big books in one gulp and riding the fastest roller coaster in the world on a recent trip to Saudi Arabia. He was cheerful and accommodating. He spoke rapidly, in fully formed paragraphs.
Shortly before the meeting, he emailed a 61-page legal notice stating that Crimson Education had initiated a $US28 million hostile takeover of Kip McGrath, an international tutoring provider. He keeps up with his studies even while travelling the world on business. A few weeks ago he was in India when he submitted his end-of-semester project for a course at Brown University, where he is working toward a master's in data science.
He said he tries to get six hours of sleep a night. John Key, a former prime minister of New Zealand, said in a telephone interview: Oh, he's lying. Key, the chair of Crimson Education, considers Beaton the second-brightest New Zealander, behind the noted scientist Ernest Rutherford, who died nearly 90 years ago. Key said he is only saying that because it is hard to take it away from the guy who split the atom.
Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, was one of Beaton's professors at Yale Law School. In recent years she has written more letters of recommendation for him than she can count. Chua said he cannot stop applying to things. She acknowledged that his story sounds apocryphal.
She said Jamie is so unusual that she would not have been surprised if someone had said to her that he invented the whole thing and does not even have a mother. The making of the boy who wanted to know everything began in Auckland, New Zealand, where he was the only child of a single mother, Paula Beaton. She was pregnant when she and Jamie's father separated, she said. They later divorced.
Jamie, who took his mother's surname, recalled odd experiences when he was young, like when his mother joined him for father-son breakfasts at his primary school. But family was important. His maternal grandparents, John and Sarah Beaton, lived with them, and so was education. Jamie's grandfather, a tradesman, always seemed to be leafing through a newspaper or an Andy McNab thriller.
His mother said one of her goals had been to expose her son to myriad opportunities. So he played tennis and basketball. He went camping, swimming and kayaking. He was nine when his mother introduced him to a chess coach named Glenn Harry Kwok.
Kwok remains part of the story of a young man whose schedule stays packed even as he keeps adding degrees, businesses and travel to a life he describes as good fun.
brisbanetimes
smh:This story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
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