pay day

This Houston university pays best for new graduates, says new report

Rice rises to the top again.

If you're looking for a Texas college or university where your education will come with an impressive paycheck, look no further than Houston's Rice University.

A new study from personal financial website SmartAsset shows the average starting salary for a newly minted Rice grad with a bachelor's degree stands at $72,400. No other college or university in Texas passes the $70,000 mark for starting salaries.

A report from PayScale.com indicates the $72,400 average salary for a Rice grad ranks 39th in the nation. Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, claims the No. 1 spot ($91,400).

The salary ranking is part of a broader SmartAsset study that examined five factors — scholarships and grants, tuition, student living costs, student retention rate, and starting salary — to determine the best-value colleges and universities in Texas. Rice also appears at No. 1 on that list.

"Rice is frequently rated as one of the nation's best values among private schools because its tuition tends to be lower than its peer research universities," the school noted in a March news release, "and its financial aid policies are regularly reviewed to keep its exceptional education affordable to students from a wide variety of cultural and economic backgrounds."

For the salary component of the study, the University of Houston ranks 10th in the state, at $57,500. Overall, it earns the No. 3 spot for best value in Texas.

Here's the list of the top 10 schools in Texas for starting salaries of new grads:

Rice University in Houston, $72,400
University of Texas at Austin, $62,100
Texas A&M University in College Station, $61,200
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, $60,800
Southern Methodist University in Dallas, $60,600
LeTourneau University in Longview, $59,900
Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View, $59,500
University of Texas at Dallas in Richardson, $58,900
Texas Tech University in Lubbock, $57,600
University of Houston, $57,500

Here's the list of the top 10 schools in Texas designated as "best value":

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colleges

all about that base

Houston hero JJ Watt sparks new investment in Texas energy startup

Courtesy of Base Power

Houston Texans legend J.J. Watt is an investor in and customer of Austin-based energy startup Base Power.

Since retiring from the NFL three years ago, Houston Texans legend J.J. Watt has been exploring a new field—investing.

In 2023, the former defensive end and current CBS Sports football analyst bought a stake in English soccer team Burnley FC. A year later, he invested in the PopUp Bagels chain.

This summer, Watt made what may be his highest-profile investment yet. He contributed to a $1 billion Series D round for Austin-based energy startup Base Power, which has an office in Houston. It’s Watts’ first investment in the energy sector.

“I like companies that solve real problems, and Base is lowering power bills, protecting families, and building the whole thing themselves right here in Texas,” Watt said in a company news release.

“What impressed me wasn’t just how fast they’ve grown,” he adds. “It’s that they’ve already saved Texans millions on their power bills and kept thousands of homes running when the lights went out. That’s why I invested.”

Base Power is building a distributed network of residential batteries that’s designed to strengthen the grid and lower electrical bills. The startup now powers more than 30,000 homes in Texas, including the Houston area, and recently expanded to Illinois.

Base Power’s $1 billion round lifted its valuation to $13 billion. Since being founded in 2023, the startup has raised more than $2.5 billion.

“JJ is a legend in this state, and he earned that as much for how he shows up off the field as for what he did on it,” says Zach Dell, co-founder and CEO of Base Power. "He spent a full day with us asking every hard question he could think of, and then he switched to Base himself. We’re glad to have him partnering with us.”

Zach Dell is the only son of Austin billionaire Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Round Rock-based Dell Technologies. Michael Dell grew up in Bellaire.

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This story was first published on our sister site EnergyCapitalHTX.