Rice University will offer an undergraduate major in business beginning this fall.
The curriculum will be administered through Rice’s top-ranked Jones Graduate School of Business (JGSB) and taught by its faculty.
“There’s a demand for deeper business education from our current and prospective students, and Rice Business can deliver to undergraduates the high-quality degree programs we have always delivered to MBAs, Master of Accountancy and Ph.D. students,” said Peter Rodriguez, dean of the Jones School.
Rice’s business major will offer a robust foundation in leadership and business fundamentals, including accounting, finance, marketing, organizational behavior, strategy and communications. To complete a major in business, students must also complete a finance or management concentration, which requires additional advanced courses. Both concentrations provide the knowledge, research and analytical skills to solve a broad array of today’s business problems.
“We strive to be a forward-thinking business school for the next generation of global leaders,” Rodriguez wrote in an announcement to the school. “I am thrilled to say we will now be educating tomorrow’s leaders a little bit sooner,”
Current freshmen and incoming undergraduates will be eligible. There will be no limit on the number of students in the program.
The new major joins Rice Business’ current offerings for undergraduates, a minor in business and a minor in entrepreneurship.
Rice Business offers a master’s degree program in business administration (MBA), a one-year Master of Accounting program and a Ph.D. program in business, the latter for students seeking academic careers at research universities.
For more information, visit https://business.rice.edu/undergraduate-business-major.
Peter Rodriguez, the Houston Endowment Dean of the Jones Graduate School of Business and the Virani Undergraduate School of Business at Rice University, has been named the 2025 Poets&Quants Dean of the Year, a national honor recognizing visionary leadership and outstanding contributions to business education.
In less than a decade, Rodriguez has transformed Rice Business in nearly every dimension. Beyond creating a thriving undergraduate offering, he has overseen a 192% increase in student enrollment. The growth stems from a doubling of MBA students and the launch of an online MBA—the university’s first online degree—along with a hybrid MBA option.
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