“We recognize the most illustrious member of the Harvard College class of 1977 never to have graduated from Harvard,” said Harvard University Provost Steven Hyman.

“While his classmates, including his friend Steve Ballmer, were busy cramming for midterms, he was planning for a revolution, the rise of the personal computer,” Hyman said. “It seems high time that his alma mater hand over the diploma.”

Gates, who dropped out of Harvard in his junior year before co-founding Microsoft Corp. and going on to become the world’s richest person, stopped off at his former stomping grounds to collect an honorary law degree.