university ranking news

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

2026 jobs forecast

Houston's health care sector will drive job growth in 2026, report predicts

Photo by simonkr/Getty Images

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Buoyed by the growing health care sector, the Houston metro area will add 30,900 jobs in 2026, according to a new forecast from the Greater Houston Partnership.

The report predicts the Houston area’s health care sector will tack on 14,000 jobs next year, which would make it the No. 1 industry for local job growth. The 14,000 health care jobs would represent 45 percent of the projected 30,900 new jobs. In the job-creation column, the health care industry is followed by:

Construction: addition of 6,100 jobs in 2026
Public education: Addition of 5,800 jobs
Public administration: Addition of 5,000 jobs

At the opposite end of the regional workforce, the administrative support services sector is expected to lose 7,500 jobs in 2026, preceded by:

Manufacturing: Loss of 3,400 jobs
Oil-and-gas extraction: Loss of 3,200 jobs
Retail: Loss of 1,800 jobs

“While current employment growth has moderated, the outlook remains robust and Houston’s broader economic foundation remains strong,” GHP president and CEO Steve Kean said in the report.

“Global companies are choosing to invest in Houston — Eli Lilly, Foxconn, Inventec, and others — because they believe in our workforce and our long-term trajectory,” Kean added. “These commitments reinforce that Houston is a place where companies can scale and where our economy continues to demonstrate its resilience as a major engine for growth and opportunity. These commitments and current prospects we are working on give us confidence in the future growth of our economy.”

The Greater Houston Partnership says that while the 30,900-job forecast falls short of the region’s recent average of roughly 50,000 new jobs per year, it’s “broadly in line with the muted national outlook” for employment gains anticipated in 2026.

“Even so, Houston’s young, skilled workforce and strong pipeline of major new projects should help offset energy sector pressures and keep regional growth on pace with the nation,” the report adds.

The report says that even though the health care sector faces rising insurance costs, which might cause some people to delay or skip medical appointments, and federal changes in Medicare and Medicaid, strong demographic trends in the region will ensure health care remains “a key pillar of Houston’s economy.”

As for the local oil-and-gas extraction industry, the report says fluctuations and uncertainty in the global oil-and-gas market will weigh on the Houston sector in 2026. Furthermore, oil-and-gas layoffs partly “reflect a longer-term trend as companies in the sector move toward greater efficiency using fewer workers to produce similar volumes,” according to the report.

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