Higher insurance premiums are leading to more mortgage delinquencies, which can strain lenders, according to research in a paper co-authored by Stephanie Johnson, a finance professor at Rice Business.
Rice Business will celebrate the completion of the highest point of its new building with a "topping out" ceremony Feb. 28. This milestone marks the structural peak of the project, and the event will bring together university and school leaders to sign the building's final beam before it is lifted into place atop the structure.
Rice Business will celebrate the completion of the highest point of its new building with a "topping out" ceremony Feb. 28. This milestone marks the structural peak of the project, and the event will bring together university and school leaders to sign the building's final beam before it is lifted into place atop the structure.
The business school broke ground on the new building in May and expects to welcome students to the new facility, adjacent to McNair Hall, in 2026. The new Rice Business building will reflect a modern, inviting design aimed at fostering campus engagement and collaboration. With more than 112,000 square feet of flexible space, it will feature classrooms, seminar rooms, faculty offices, ample event space, expanded dining options and various gathering areas. Additionally, two theater-style classrooms will offer premium learning environments and host public lectures.
News media who would like to attend, please email Avery Ruxer Franklin, media relations specialist at Rice, at AveryRF@rice.edu.
What: Rice Business “topping out” ceremony.
When: Friday, Feb. 28, from 10:30-11:30 a.m.
Where: Rice’s McNair Hall. Parking is available in the central campus garage next to McNair.
Who: Rice President Reginald DesRoches, Rice Business Dean Peter Rodriguez, Rice Business assistant dean for external relations Mark Putnam and members of Rice Business’ board of advisers.
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Rice Business hosted a celebration Feb. 13 for the newly named Virani Undergraduate School of Business. Houston business and community leaders Farid and alumna Asha Virani ’89 made a historic gift to the university’s business program last fall, igniting a new era of opportunity for students.
Rice Business hosted a celebration Feb. 13 for the newly named Virani Undergraduate School of Business. Houston business and community leaders Farid and alumna Asha Virani ’89 made a historic gift to the university’s business program last fall, igniting a new era of opportunity for students.
“We are so fortunate that the Virani family will lend us their name for this important undergraduate program,” Dean Peter Rodriguez said in his remarks.
Rice welcomed faculty, university leadership and the Viranis’ family and friends to Jamail Plaza outside McNair Hall for dinner, drinks and dessert. Guests were able to greet and chat with the Virani family, including Farid and Asha as well as their son and alumnus Faraz ’21 and daughter Zoya. Guests could also stroll through a visual timeline of Rice Business history with the latest installment being the naming of the Virani Undergraduate School of Business — what Rice Business calls “the foundation” for the school’s future.
Initially launched in 2021, the undergraduate business major has built on the success of Rice Business’ graduate programs and utilizes the same world-renowned faculty. It’s become one of the most popular majors on campus and continues to grow.
“When Peter Rodriguez discussed the formation of the new Rice undergraduate business program, we were looking for a family that had a real passion for Rice, a family that had a demonstrated love for the Houston community, but just as importantly, we hoped that it would be an entrepreneur that was exceptional, because Rice is the No. 1 entrepreneurship program in the nation,” said Lori Sherman, Farid Virani’s fellow board member with Teach For America Houston, in a video shown at the event. “With these criteria, the choice was obvious.”
Caroline Mazur-Sarocka, a senior majoring in business and president of the Rice Business Society, spoke about her experience transferring into the business major and how the program expanded her view on the world of business.
“This is more than just a new name for a new program. Undergraduates now have a distinct identity to rally behind and one of which we can all be proud,” Mazur-Sarocka said. “The Viranis’ historic gift gives us a home and increases our sense of belonging at both the university and the business school.”
“True education must be built on ethics, adaptability and empathy, preparing you to navigate the uncertain future ahead of you,” Farid Virani said. “This belief is deeply rooted. Our family values, guided by our faith and its principles, [remind us that] giving back is not just a privilege, it’s a duty. Personal success means nothing unless it is used to serve others.”
Farid Virani added that he has “no doubt” that the Virani Undergraduate School of Business will become a hub for inspiration, resilience and opportunities — a place for students to be encouraged to think big, act ethically and lead with purpose.
“Our vision is to foster a culture of curious and compassionate lifelong learners who will lead with a strong ethical orientation and intellectual humility,” Asha Virani said.
The gift will significantly impact the more than 300 students currently declared as business majors, fostering a new generation of leaders equipped to tackle pressing global challenges. This includes supporting ongoing growth in the number of business majors at Rice and advancing opportunities in areas like energy transition, artificial intelligence, nonprofits benefiting society at large, health care reform and the revitalization of urban communities.
“The Viranis’ transformative gift will ensure that our business education continues to thrive and, in fact, expand, shaping the future of business leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation at Rice and beyond,” President Reginald DesRoches said. “Fifty years ago, Rice made a bold and forward-thinking decision to establish a business school that would prepare the next generation of leaders for the complexities of a rapidly changing world. Over the past half-century, Rice Business has grown into a powerhouse of business education, producing outstanding graduates … who are making an impact in Houston, across the country and around the globe. Our graduate program is now one of the most recognized in the nation, producing more MBAs than any other program in the state of Texas.”
The business school also broke ground on a new building in 2024 and expects to welcome students to the new facility, adjacent to McNair Hall, in 2026. To learn more about the programs at Rice Business, visit business.rice.edu.
To see a recap of the celebration, visit https://youtu.be/_KBfnHivvSo.
"I chose the Online MBA because I needed the flexibility. I have a mortgage to pay and couldn’t afford to step away from work. Rice Business’ program gave me access to a top-tier education while allowing me to grow my career and remain financially independent."
Rice Business professor Vikas Mittal says that senior executives need to take greater responsibility in regards to the findings of business research rather than rushing to oversimplified conclusions.
Houston's urban landscape is evolving beyond its iconic skyline, yes Rice Business professor Burdette Huffman — with a focus on creating vibrant, walkable spaces that could reshape the city's economy and quality of life.
Some schools, including Rice Business, offer a GMAT waiver for their full-time MBA programs, based on factors like work experience or holding a professional degree from a U.S. college.
Gender segregation within mentorship networks plays a major role in limiting access to critical resources for female entrepreneurs, according to a working paper co-authored by Minjae Kim, assistant professor of management at Rice Business.
When a gig-work platform switched from a five-star rating system to a simple thumbs-up/down, it eliminated a 9% racial earnings gap for their workers.
Based on research by Sora Jun, Tristan L. Botelho (Yale), Demetrius Humes (Toronto) and Katherine A. DeCelles (Toronto)
Key findings:
A new study published in Nature by Rice Business professor Sora Jun and colleagues at Yale and the University of Toronto reveals that racial bias quietly skews gig-worker ratings, affecting minority workers’ earnings. On one home services platform, the traditional five-star system created a 9% income gap: non-white workers were earning just 91 cents for every dollar their white peers made.
When the researchers analyzed 100,759 completed jobs and nearly 70,000 customer ratings from the U.S. and Canada, they found that minority workers consistently received lower ratings — a small but financially significant bias. But when the platform switched to a simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down system, the income gap disappeared.
“The numbers don’t lie,” says Sora Jun, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Rice Business. “We saw evidence that subtle racial bias was creeping into five-star ratings, quietly chipping away at non-white workers’ earnings. When the rating system was changed, the earning gap was gone.”
Customer ratings influence earnings on many gig platforms. A single decimal point can push workers into lower income brackets, reducing their pay for identical work.
This study reveals that five-star rating systems create space for subtle discrimination, where customers score minority workers slightly lower, with a 0.07-star difference (4.72 vs. 4.79).
While this gap may seem small, it had significant financial consequences. For example, if a gig worker earns $40,000 a year, a 9% pay gap means they are taking home $3,600 less annually — purely due to biased ratings.
Multiply this across an entire workforce, and the financial impact is staggering. According to the World Bank, an estimated 154 million to 435 million people worldwide are working gig jobs online, up to 12% of the global workforce.
The research team tested their hypothesis in multiple ways. First, they analyzed real-world data from a platform that changed its rating system abruptly, without informing users of the switch.
“Five-star ratings can feel objective, but they’re anything but,” Jun explains. “They may give customers too much room to let their biases slip in. When we force people to make a dichotomous decision — yes or no — they focus on performance, not personal perceptions.”
Before the change, white workers were 3.9 percentage points more likely to receive a perfect five-star rating compared to non-white workers. But after the introduction of the thumbs-up/thumbs-down system, this gap vanished.
The researchers also ran controlled experiments, where participants were asked to rate identical work by either white or non-white workers using different rating scales.
The results were clear: racial bias was more pronounced in the five-star system and significantly reduced in the binary system. White and non-white workers received positive ratings at nearly identical rates (95.9% vs 95.4%).
“Five-star ratings can feel objective, but they’re anything but,” Jun explains. “They may give customers too much room to let their biases slip in. When we force people to make a dichotomous decision — yes or no — they focus on performance, not personal perceptions.”
Bias in ratings is not just a problem for one company — ratings are used across the gig economy, which spans transportation (Uber, Lyft), delivery services (DoorDash, Instacart) and freelance work (Upwork, Fiverr).
Many platforms rely on customer ratings to allocate opportunities, promotions and even account suspensions. If ratings are biased, so are the economic outcomes.
The findings suggest that platforms can meaningfully reduce racial inequities with a relatively simple intervention. While diversity training and anti-bias policies are common in corporate hiring, they’re impractical for gig economy customers, who aren’t employees and can’t be required to follow training or bias guidelines.
Changing the way ratings are structured, however, is a simple and scalable fix.
One potential concern is whether switching to a thumbs-up/thumbs-down system removes valuable detail from customer ratings. The researchers acknowledge that binary ratings provide less nuance than a five-star system, but they argue this loss of detail is largely irrelevant.
In practice, most customers inflate ratings, with 85% already giving five stars, meaning the extra precision of a five-star scale is more illusion than reality. Platforms should ask themselves: do we care more about fairness or fake precision? Because right now, the status quo is costing real people real money.
“If we’re serious about tackling bias, we can’t just rely on people to be more self-aware,” Jun says. “We need structural fixes. And sometimes, the smallest tweaks — like changing how we rate workers — can make a big impact.”
Written by Seb Murray
Botelho, Jun, Humes, and DeCelles, “Scale Dichotomization Reduces Customer Racial Discrimination and Income Inequality.” Nature (2025): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08599-7.
The 2025 Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) announced today the 42 startups invited to compete for more than $1 million in prizes April 10-12 at Rice University and the Ion in Houston.
42 graduate student-led startups to compete for more than $1 million in prizes
The 2025 Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) announced today the 42 startups invited to compete for more than $1 million in prizes April 10-12 at Rice University and the Ion in Houston.
The RBPC, presented by Rice Business and hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, brings together the best student ventures from top universities across the world to compete for prizes in front of more than 300 angel, venture capital and corporate investors and members of the business community.
In its most competitive year yet, the event’s judges, made up of venture capitalists, corporate leaders and entrepreneurs, selected 42 of the most investable startups among the applicants to compete in Houston. These ventures represent the very best in graduate student entrepreneurship from universities across the country and world — they are building cutting-edge solutions in energy, cleantech and sustainability; life sciences and health care; hard tech; digital; and consumer products. This year’s invited startups represent 34 universities from four countries.
The student entrepreneurs gain real-world experience to pitch their startups, enhance their business strategy and learn what it takes to launch a successful company. With a goal of not only competing for cash but also understanding what it takes to secure investment, raise awareness and launch a successful venture, these graduate students will pitch their companies through three rounds and three days of competition in hopes of taking home the grand prize.
The 42 ventures for RBPC 2025:
3rd-I, University of Miami AG3 Labs, Michigan State University Arcticedge Technologies, University of Waterloo Ark Health, University of Chicago Automatic AI, University of Mississippi Bobica Bars, Rowan University Carbon Salary, Washington University in St. Louis Carmine Minerals, California State University, San Bernardino Celal-Mex, Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education CELLECT Laboratories, University of Waterloo ECHO Solutions, University of Houston EDUrain, University of Missouri-St. Louis Eutrobac, University of California, Santa Cruz FarmSmart.ai, Louisiana State University Fetal Therapy Technologies, Johns Hopkins University GreenLIB Materials, University of Ottawa Humimic Biosystems, University of Arkansas HydroHaul, Harvard University Intero Biosystems, University of Michigan Interplay, University of Missouri-Kansas City MabLab, Harvard University | Microvitality, Tufts University Mito Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University Motmot, Michigan State University Mud Rat, University of Connecticut Nanoborne, University of Texas at Austin NerView Surgical, McMaster University NeuroFore, Washington University in St. Louis Novus, Stanford University OAQ, University of Toronto Parthian Battery Solutions, Columbia University Pattern Materials, Rice University Photon Queue, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign re.solution, RWTH Aachen University Rise Media, Yale University Rivulet , Dartmouth College Sabana, Carnegie Mellon University SearchOwl, Case Western Reserve University Six Carbons, Indiana University Songscription, Stanford University Watermarked.ai, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Xatoms, University of Toronoto |
The 2025 competition marks the 25th year for RBPC. Since its inception, the competition has grown from nine teams competing for $10,000 in prize money in 2001 to 42 teams from around the world competing for more than $1 million in cash, investment and in-kind prizes. Over the event’s two decades, 868 teams have raised more than $6.1 billion in capital with 59 successful exits.
For more information about this year’s RBPC, visit rbpc.rice.edu.
"I chose the Online MBA because I needed the flexibility. I have a mortgage to pay and couldn’t afford to step away from work. Rice Business’ program gave me access to a top-tier education while allowing me to grow my career and remain financially independent."
Rice Business professor Vikas Mittal says that senior executives need to take greater responsibility in regards to the findings of business research rather than rushing to oversimplified conclusions.
Houston's urban landscape is evolving beyond its iconic skyline, yes Rice Business professor Burdette Huffman — with a focus on creating vibrant, walkable spaces that could reshape the city's economy and quality of life.
Rice Business assistant professor of finance Benedict Guttman-Kenney weighs in on the topic of American credit card debt versus emergency savings.
Ever wondered why Houston is known as a culinary and cultural capital? Check out our top recommendations for food, drinks and fun around Rice University and bask in the options — there’s something for every appetite.
Houston natives will tell you that our city has the best food scene — and the numbers speak for themselves. Here in the “newest capital of great food,” Houston offers nearly 13,000 restaurants and cuisines from over 70 different countries and regions. On your first visit to the city, the sheer variety can feel a bit overwhelming.
To help you feel at home, we’ve created your guide to the best food, drinks and fun near Rice University, curated with insights from our students and alumni.
When you begin your MBA at Rice Business, you’ll discover that staying well-nourished is crucial to success. Explore these Rice Village treasures and other local favorites recommended by our Rice Business students:
Our alumni-owned and operated restaurants serve some of the most unforgettable flavors in the city — helping make Houston one of the top foodie cities in the United States. Fuel up at one of our local alum-run restaurants:
Don’t forget to treat yourself to some authentic Tex-Mex or a plate of brisket while you’re in town! If nothing else, these trusted recommendations from Food & Wine will convince you to stay.
After indulging in Houston’s vibrant culinary scene, why not explore some of the city’s hidden gems? Between the arts, outdoors and sciences — this city has it all.
Experience a variety of arts and cultures in the Museum District or enjoy a breath of fresh air with beloved wildlife at the 55-acre Houston Zoo, located within Hermann Park. While in the area, relax with a cup of tea at the beautiful Japanese Garden at Hermann Park or with a show at Miller Outdoor Theatre, Houston’s beloved outdoor performance venue.
To make the most of your experience, immerse yourself in the local arts and sports. Enjoy an evening performance by a renowned arts company, or catch a game at one of our major league stadiums — home to the Astros, Rockets, Texans and more.
Take a quick drive to Space Center Houston, where NASA displays its iconic spacecrafts and exhibits, or venture into the city and visit the Houston Farmers Market, the city’s largest and oldest community market. When you’re ready to head back to campus, stop by Rice Village, where you’ll find 16 blocks of local boutiques and shops.
Here in the nation’s fourth-largest and most diverse city, there are always new restaurants to try and places to explore. Dive into the city’s rich and diverse community and you’ll find there’s no better place to begin a new chapter.
Ready to take the next step? Explore our Full-Time MBA program.
There's lots to love about Houston — from the amazing local restaurants to the vibrant arts scene. For those considering graduate school, choosing the right location can transform your MBA experience.
Transitioning from military service to an MBA program is a significant shift — one that comes with challenges, surprises and valuable opportunities. Hear from two U.S. veteran Rice MBAs.
Celebrate International Women’s Day with insights from participants and committee members at Rice Business’ 25th Women in Leadership Conference. This annual event, which inspires leaders with thought-provoking workshops and discussions, is one of many ways our community is committed to accelerating action, opening doors and advancing opportunities for women.
Ever wondered why Houston is known as a culinary and cultural capital? Check out our top recommendations for food, drinks and fun around Rice University and bask in the options — there’s something for every appetite.