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5 Houston universities land on U.S. News' 2026 list of best colleges

Rice is the No. 1 university in Texas for 2026, U.S. News says.

Rice University

Five Houston universities have been named among U.S. News and World Report's just-released list of best universities in the nation for 2026, with Rice University landing on top in Texas.

U.S. News' prestigious Best Colleges rankings annually compare nearly 1,700 U.S. colleges and universities using 17 metrics that measure "academic quality." Schools are ranked nationally, regionally, and by specialty.

Houston's "Harvard of the South" continues to reign as Texas' No. 1 university, and it reclaimed the No. 17 spot nationally after previously slipping into No. 18 last year. Rice is joined in Texas' top 10 by University of Houston and University of St. Thomas, Houston.

Rice has a competitive 8 percent acceptance rate, and students pay $60,709 yearly for tuition and fees, according to the school's profile.

This has proven to be a great year for the Rice Owls. The university's exceptional graduate business and entrepreneurship programs constantly land atop U.S. News' separate rankings of best grad schools, and its alumni reportedly experience notable long-term career success.

Forbes named Rice among its top universities for 2025, and the school also earned acclaim on The Princeton Review's "hall of fame" list of the best U.S. colleges for 2026.

Other top Houston schools
The University of Houston ranked as the 8th best Texas university for another consecutive year, and it tied for No. 132 in the national rankings after falling into No. 144 last year. Separately, the University of Houston, Clear Lake also appeared in the rankings, appearing at No. 318 nationally for 2026.

In-state tuition and fees add up to $11,882 a year for UH students, U.S. News says, and the public university boasts a 70 percent acceptance rate. Students benefit from having a 21:1 student-faculty ratio, and 34 percent of classes have fewer than 20 students.

This public university is also having a successful year: In July, UH archaeologists discovered a 1,700-year-old Mayan tomb, and earlier in September two UH science projects became finalists in a competition to win part of a $50 million research grant.

Elsewhere in Houston, the University of St. Thomas ranked as the 10th best university in Texas and tied for No. 198 nationwide, and Prairie View A&M University tied as No. 343 nationally for 2026.

U.S. News' top 10 best colleges in Texas for 2026 are:

No. 1 – Rice University, Houston
No. 2 – University of Texas at Austin
No. 3 – Texas A&M University, College Station
No. 4 – Baylor University, Waco
No. 5 – Southern Methodist University, Dallas
No. 6 – Texas Christian University, Fort Worth
No. 7 – The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson
No. 8 – University of Houston
No. 9 – Texas Tech University, Lubbock
No. 10 – University of St. Thomas, Houston

rice university us news & world report rankings college rankings university of houston colleges

Jobs report

Texas clocks in as No. 7 best state to find a job, new report says

Photo by The Jopwell Collection on Unsplash

It's easier to find a job in Texas than in nearly any other state.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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