The Jones Graduate School of Business is one of the seven academic units of Rice, a private university based in Houston, Texas. It was founded in 1974 with a gift from the Houston Endowment to mark the centenary of the birth of Jones, the creator of the Endowment. Its motto is "Leading thought, shaping the world".
It is located on a 285-acre wooded campus close to the centre of Houston and makes use of its small size, with around 40 students admitted each year to its full-time residential MBA. It also offers part-time, online, executive and professional MBAs, with the idiosyncrasies of each type of student laid out along with much factual information in a semi-humourous "Field Guide". Around 80 per cent of MBA students, including those on the Military Scholars programme, receive some form of merit-based scholarship.
The online MBA@Rice, a 54-credit course which can be completed in two years, was described by the dean, Peter Rodriguez, as "a significant milestone for our school" as the first students were enrolled in 2018. Joint courses include a MD/MBA degree conducted jointly with the medical school at Baylor University.
There is an emphasis on action-based, experiential-learning, with students taking part in a team-based 13-week Action Learning Project as part of their studies. The Rice Business Plan Competition, which is claimed to be the largest, richest student start-up competition in the world with annual prizes of $2 million has been held every year since 2001. In 2018 the first prize worth $300,000 was won by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
