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MBA programs are nearly reaching gender parity with more than 41% women enrollment

Ashley Ward '24 (left) and Ashleigh Rogers '24 (right)

Ashley Ward ’24, a fellow with the Forté Foundation, an organization focused on career development and business education for women, and Ashleigh Rogers ’24, talk about what it means to be a woman in business.

“I knew that if I was going to go back to school, I would need support financially, and wanted to see what scholarships were attainable for Black females,” says Ward. A scholarship, she says, made her “dream a reality.”

“It’s about making sure people are supported if they want to pursue financial roles that typically are extremely male-dominated,” said Rogers.

Jan. 27, 2023 | Sydney Lake

A Florida proposal parents agree on: banning cell phones in classrooms

Vikas Mittal, the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Management – Marketing, weighs in on a recent proposal from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) supporting cell phone restrictions in schools. His conclusion: As polarizing as DeSantis has been, in education specifically, parents would be on board with this one.

From Mittal: “According to a 2022 study of 10,897 parents with a child in school, 61 percent agree they would support banning cell phones from classrooms. Support is high among Asian (64 percent), Caucasian (61 percent), African American (55 percent) and Hispanic/ Latino (56 percent) parents. Parents from low (60 percent) and high (61 percent) socioeconomic status support a ban.”

Jan. 26, 2023 | Vikas Mittal

MBA Salaries & Bonuses At The Top 30 U.S. Business Schools

MBA salaries and bonuses were at record or near-record levels for the Class of 2022. Rice Business had a 14.9% increase in starting salaries in the last year.

“Starting salaries for MBAs graduating from the top 30 business schools flat-lined between 2020, the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, and 2021,” wrote Ethier. “But a year later, salaries and signing bonuses are looking robust, with new school records aplenty, whether those B-schools measure in averages or medians.”

Jan. 25, 2023 | Marc Ethier

Peak Gasoline Heralds Price Shocks for Drivers, Inflation Headaches

Ten-year-old sustainability initiatives may be taking hold, signaled by the prediction that gasoline demand has peaked. Good news for the environment, maybe, but consumers are in for a bumpy ride. “In the next several years, the fuel industry is poised to cut supply faster than the drop in demand, with more plants due to shut or convert to smaller biofuels facilities,” reports Bloomberg writer Chunzi Xu. “The result could be production crunches for gasoline, price spikes or even limited outages because of the mismatch. Paradoxically for drivers, it’s gasoline’s slow death that will make it painful.”

Peak gasoline will "have significant implications for consumers, inflation, politics," said Mark Finley, an energy fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. "All in all, a big deal — over time."

Jan. 20, 2023 | Chunzi Xu

‘There’s definitely an accountant shortage out there’: MBAs have become the go-to degree and companies are struggling to hire enough CPAs

Ben Lansford, accounting professor and director of the Master of Accounting program, discusses the reason accounting is a major in decline at schools across the country — and why it’s worth the time.

“Accounting is difficult,” he says. “It’s just a tough subject area, and you need a fifth year of college education to qualify to sit for the CPA exam.”

Even so, says Lansford, accounting is a “rock-solid foundation” and a career path in demand: while there was a 17% drop in employed accountants in auditors from 2019 to 2021, according to Bloomberg Tax analysis, companies’ needs for accountants hasn’t budged.

Nov. 10, 2022 | Sheryl Estrada