Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business placed in the top 10 of five categories in The Princeton Review’s latest rankings of the Best Business Schools for 2021, including the No. 6 spot for its newest program, MBA@Rice.

Rice Business ranked highly in both the On-Campus MBA and Online MBA classifications. MBA@Rice graduated its first cohort this past May, making it eligible to be ranked.

The Princeton Review rankings are based on data from its surveys of nearly 24,000 students enrolled in MBA programs at 369 schools and of administrators at those schools. Among the factors assessed were career outcomes, technological infrastructure, academic rigor and affordability.

Rice Business was in the top 10 in the following categories:

On-Campus MBA Programs

• Best MBA for Finance — No. 5.
• Most Competitive Students — No. 5.
• Best MBA for Consulting — No. 6.
• Best Classroom Experience — No. 10.
• Top 50 Online MBA Programs — No. 6.

“All courses at Rice Business are taught by a team of dedicated, nationally recognized faculty who integrate insights from their own rigorous, peer-reviewed research to help students understand topics in accounting, finance, marketing, organizational behavior and strategy in the context of today’s business landscape,” said Rice Business Dean Peter Rodriguez.
 

Today’s rankings are a reflection of the school’s commitment to excellence in teaching and serving our students.

Peter Rodriguez

Dean of the Jones Graduate School of Business

Updated from original post that was published on 12/02/2020.

Why Rice Business is Growing

Q and A with Former Dean Peter Rodriguez

As one of the top MBA programs, Rice Business has always been intentionally small and selective. It’s an educational approach that has launched the careers of thousands of top-tier, versatile business people able to solve some of the biggest organizational challenges.

We recognize the tremendous advantages of getting an MBA. Our programs are designed to meet the increasing demands of today's industries and equip our students with the skills necessary for leadership roles. We've launched new offerings to respond to the demand for top business school graduates – especially within Houston, where waves of new residents, innovators and Fortune 1000 businesses create an ecosystem full of opportunities for MBAs.

Houston needs top caliber MBAs. Rice Business is accommodating the demand

Here, Rice Business Former Dean Peter Rodriguez explains why the Rice Business community is now a bigger pond with more fish.

Q: MBA applications at top programs have leaped upward. Rice Business has fielded more applications and expanded its MBA offerings. Why are MBAs at top schools in demand right now?

PR:  The MBA is the most successful post-graduate degree program in history, largely because it directly addresses the knowledge and skills that translate into leadership opportunities. Leading in organizations, whether established or being created, is challenging, multi-dimensional work. It requires far more than discipline in one specific skill delivered by one individual. It demands accountability for others and the skills to shape and influence their work as individuals and teams.

No undergraduate degree and few graduate degrees prepare one for that, or for understanding how to sustain and grow an organization in competitive markets. The MBA does this like no other degree, and in that sense, it’s the pathway degree for growth in one’s career across many fields.

The onset of the COVID-induced recession prompted more and more potential applicants to invest in their education to expand their career options. The larger trend of growth, though, is in the same direction -- and extends beyond that unforeseen event.

Rice Business is uniquely suited to meet this demand, offering the best MBA programs in Houston. Its entrepreneurship program ranked #1 nationally for excellence for the sixth year in a row by Princeton Review & Entrepreneur Magazine. The faculty is top-notch, known for both classroom teaching and groundbreaking research, and the rigorous curriculum is STEM certified and ranked #3 in Finance. In addition to top academics, Rice Business also emphasizes leadership and communications training, with a careful mix of coursework, action learning projects, and the expectation that students take on leadership roles at major conferences such as Houston’s Women In Leadership Conference and Rice Energy Finance Summit.

Finally, one of the program’s most distinctive strengths is its culture of entrepreneurship. At Rice Business we believe that an entrepreneurial mindset is critical whatever you do in business: whether launching a startup, acquiring a company or making changes in an existing organization.

Q: What does the growth of Rice Business student mean for professionals considering an MBA here?

PR: Having more students to study with at Rice Business enriches the classroom experience and brings a wider perspective to conversations about careers and how best to pursue one’s professional aspirations. Today’s growth will also result in a deeper and more diverse network of fellow Rice alumni – which in turn sustain the value of a Rice MBA for years into the future. We’ve managed to grow while still retaining the balance and personal touch that larger programs can’t match: a hallmark benefit of studying at Rice Business.

Q: What are the practical reasons for investing in a top-quality business school?

PR: You only get an MBA once. Some people mistakenly analogize choosing an MBA program to large consumer purchase decisions, but it’s quite different. You get a redo on most consumer decisions, even if it’s as large as a home purchase. You choose your university degree once and so you must choose the highest quality available to you.

Quality endures, and it’s even more evident in a top-quality education than in any other choice. It’s sometimes easier to see why quality is so essential if you ask someone what kindergarten they’d choose for their 5-year-old, or how carefully they’d consider the choice of an eye surgeon. It may seem different, but choosing a top-quality MBA program is similar in that it’s a highly-consequential choice that matters for the long run. 

That’s why at Rice, as our degree programs have become more and more favorably recognized, and our format options have grown, applications have increased.

Q: What role does the city of Houston play for Rice Business students before and after graduation?  

PR: Houston’s economic size, concentration of top firms, youth and diversity make it a hotbed of career opportunities for those students who choose to stay in Houston. It’s the fourth largest city in the country, site of the fourth largest number of Fortune 1000 companies, the most diverse U.S. city – and a national center of innovation.

Any successful city and region is a magnet for talent. Houston is no exception. Our industries and young, innovative firms attract the best and brightest from around the state, nation and world. Their differences and creativity fuel the innovations that keep our city thriving. In turn, they attract the investments in healthcare, energy, and renewables that keep Houston in the lead in these fields.

Coupled with the opportunities for study at a top business school and the density of Rice graduates throughout the city, the career prospects here are as good -- or better -- than in any city in the nation.

Bringing students from around the nation and world into our MBA programs are part of this virtuous cycle of attraction between talent, investment and the career opportunities that follow. What we have to offer is rare and special: a highly-ranked business school in a diverse, large, economically robust and welcoming city where you can afford to live well and be ready for the future too. That’s why some of our students end up choosing to stay in Houston.
 

Explore the Rice MBA

Owl Have You Know

Julianne Katz ’21 talks about her decision to switch from a career in fine arts in NYC to a graduate degree in business. She also discusses what it was like to have to shift from in-person classes to virtual learning during a global pandemic.

Subscribe to Owl Have You Know on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Based on research by Kunal Sachdeva

In recent years, activist investors have been voicing their wishes – and changing corporate governance – with growing vigor. Most research, however, tracks the way these investors shape these companies in order to increase shareholder wealth. In a groundbreaking new study, Rice Business professor Kunal Sachdeva has shown that activist investors can also change a company’s environmental choices – leading to lower toxic emissions, greenhouse gases, and pollution in the neighborhoods around specific facilities.

“The Real Effects of Environmental Activist Investing,” a working paper co-written by Sachdeva with professor Lakshmi Naaraayanan and doctoral student Varun Sharma of London Business School, recently won the Moskowitz Prize from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. The prize honors work that shows how shareholders can positively influence a company’s environmental impact. Here, Sachdeva explains his findings.

RBW: What drew you to this topic?

KS: People are increasingly interested in investments that align with social mandates. One of these mandates is addressing climate change and the environment. Traditionally, investors express this concern through divestment campaigns: selling or not investing in fossil fuel companies or utility companies that are large polluters. However, if you do that, you lose a seat at the table. You can’t use your voice within these firms because you are not an owner.

Our question was: Can investors use traditional tools such as activism to demand that firms improve practices such as environmental behaviors?

RBW: What was the answer?

KS: The answer was yes. We approached this by studying the New York City Pensions System, which instituted an activist campaign called the Boardroom Accountability Project (BAP). The project gave pensioners a long-term voice in the companies where they invest, and one of their key mandates was addressing companies’ effect on the environment. To get our answers, we looked at firms that the Project targeted over environmental issues. We specifically wanted to know how these firms responded, how local economies were affected and what the financial implications were for the firms involved.

RBW: What challenges did you encounter in this research?

KS: Our main challenge was accurately measuring and linking the change in a firm’s environmental performance to the activism campaign. For example, a firm may have already been in the process of improving its environmental practices. If this were the case, our study could overstate the impact of the activism. So we needed to find a setting that let us precisely measure the effects of investor activism.

Studying the Boardroom Accountability Project allowed us to compare facilities that had been targeted with facilities that had not been targeted. We then used data from the EPA to understand the exact changes that each company was enacting.

RBW: What outcomes did you see for the targeted companies?

KS: On average, the plants targeted by the BAP reduced toxic emissions by 13 percent. We also saw a significant drop in greenhouse gas emissions.

When we looked beyond the plant level to the neighborhoods around the facilities, we saw a marked improvement in air quality. 

We also tested whether the targeted firms were shifting their pollution output to offsite plants. There was no evidence of this. Nor was there any drop in production. What we did see was a striking increase in company’s abatement efforts and capital spending related to these plant-level efforts.

Finally, we wanted to understand how this activism related to stock prices. We found a slight decline in financial performance, but we are cautious when interpreting these results. Our study looked at a window of about three years. It may take more time than that for companies to see all of the financial benefits of investing in pollution-fighting technologies. 

RBW: What’s the takeaway for investors who prioritize company environmental policy?

KS: This research shows that it’s possible to change company environmental practices through investing. There has been research about hedge fund activists demanding that firms change operations, but the main goal in these cases has been to increase stockholder wealth. There’s been a dearth of research showing that we can also use activism to influence company environmental policies. Climate change is one of the biggest challenges in our lifetimes. We think this research shows one exciting tool for addressing it.

Kunal Sachdeva was an Assistant Professor of Finance with the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

Based on research by Minjae Kim

• Professionals are more likely to refer a friend, rather than an acquaintance, for a job.
• A money bonus can prompt individuals to give job tips to an acquaintance.
• Even with the promise of a significant bonus, however, people are still more likely to refer friends rather than acquaintances for a job.

Job hunting can feel like prying open a succession of elaborately padlocked doors, and making it through all of them might seem to require a miracle. In reality, though, you could know someone who has the right keys – and is willing to use them for you.

As layoffs and furloughs continue to transform the workplace, commentators often discuss whether job hunters are better served by a team of close friends or a wider, less intimate army of acquaintances. This discussion is especially relevant when about 20% of high-income workers appear to get jobs via firm-driven referral practices.

For years, research pointed toward the less intimate army. Casual acquaintances or friends-of-friends, the types of relationships known as “weak ties,” seemed preferable because they offered a greater number of and more diverse job tips. Social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and other networking sites, thrived on the notion that loosely connected groups were more effective networks than the concentrated energies of a few friends. 

But Rice Business professor Minjae Kim and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Roberto M. Fernandez have taken a fresh look at the matter, questioning whether weak ties are really that useful. In a recent paper, they analyzed when and why socially connected people share job opportunities they know about. 

To gather their data, the team surveyed 196 first-year MBA students, asking half of them (randomly assigned) their willingness to help close friends and the other half about acquaintances. Both close friends and acquaintances were described as qualified for the opportunities.

Past research assumed that regardless of the strength of the ties, people would be equally likely to relay job information, thus focusing on the reach of weaker, more numerous ties. But in Kim and Fernandez’s study, the participants, most of whom were former professionals, said they were more likely to help friends than people with distant, weaker connections. 

This was true even when the students being surveyed were offered a hypothetical financial bonus. Offering money for referrals is a time-honored practice in many industries, and indeed, when a bonus was offered, participants in the study were more willing to give a job tip to an acquaintance. 

But the study also revealed that money isn’t always enough to make people pass along job information, which other recent research confirms. For some people, Kim and Fernandez found, helping a good friend is more important than gaining professional or social benefit by helping a mere acquaintance. 

In fact, even when an acquaintance was known to be qualified for a job, and even with referral bonuses as an incentive, when it came to passing on job tips, most participants surveyed favored close friends over people with whom they only had weak ties. 

Praising the weak tie is still de rigueur in many employment think pieces. But, the team concluded, landing a job requires more than simply knowing people who know about possible job opportunities. In many cases, someone needs to make an effort for you. We all have a range of motivations, only some of them financial, for sharing information. Friendship, Kim and Fernandez discovered, is a surpassingly strong motivator for relaying job information. 

Having an intricate network can be a highly effective way to learn what’s out there. But because individuals have such a strong bias toward friends, big networks should not be a job hunters’ lone strategy. Keeping your friends close, it turns out, offers professional benefits. The  person with the key to your next job may be standing nearer than you think. 

Minjae Kim is an assistant professor of management at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. 

To learn more, please see: Kim, M. & Fernandez, R. M. (2017). Strength matters: Tie strength as a causal driver of networks’ information benefits. Social Science Research, 65, 268– 81.
 

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