Rice leads Texas colleges on LinkedIn's first-ever career success ranking

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Rice University is the top Texas college on LinkedIn's best colleges for long-term career success report. Photo via Rice.edu

Houston’s Rice University leads the Texas schools in LinkedIn’s first-ever ranking of the 50 best U.S. colleges for long-term career success.

Rice appears at No. 31 in the ranking. Southern Methodist University, located in the Dallas suburb of University Park, lands at No. 37 and the University of Texas at Austin shows up at No. 46.

LinkedIn, a career networking site, says the ranking is based on exclusive data about alumni, such as job placement rates, advancement into senior-level jobs, post-graduate formation of startups, and pre-graduation internships.

“A four-year bachelor’s degree is a significant investment of time and money, especially as tuition costs rise and the job market shifts,” the LinkedIn report says. “For millions of Americans, the return on investment is worth it. Those who earn the degree can see an enduring impact on their earning potential and overall career trajectory.”

Where someone earns a degree can have an even bigger impact, according to LinkedIn, as graduates of top programs often land jobs more rapidly, build strong professional networks, and rise to leadership roles more quickly.

“Long-term success isn’t just about landing a great first job; it’s about sustained career growth and opportunity years after graduation,” Andrew Seaman, senior editor-at-large for jobs and career development at LinkedIn News, told Fortune. “For this list, that means looking at how well a school sets alumni up for the long haul.”

Here’s a breakdown of some of the data about the three Texas schools on the LinkedIn list:

Rice University

  • Top industries of graduates: Technology, business consulting, higher education
  • Top post-graduation destinations: Houston, San Francisco Bay Area, New York City
  • Notable skills: MATLAB programming language, engineering design, data science

Southern Methodist University

  • Top industries of graduates: Financial services, business consulting
  • Top post-graduation destinations: Dallas, New York City, Los Angeles
  • Most notable skills: AMPL programming language, Avid iNews content creation system, data science

University of Texas at Austin

  • Top industries of graduates: Technology, medical practices, advertising
  • Top post-graduation destinations: Austin, Dallas, Houston
  • Most notable skills: SOLIDWORKS computer-aided design software, architecture, Avid Media Composer video editing software
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H-Town jumped 43 spots into No. 97 this year. Photo via Getty Images

Houston jumps significantly on annual list of best places to live in 2024

by the numbers

Things are looking a little brighter for Houston as the city was recently named among the top 100 best places to live in U.S. News and World Report's "Best Places to Live" list for 2024-2025.

Previously, H-Town had shockingly plummeted toward the bottom of the list as No. 140 in the 2023-2024 rankings. But the latest report has placed Houston at No. 97, suggesting substantial improvements over the last year.

U.S. News annually measures 150 top American cities for their livability and ranks them based on four major indexes: quality of life, value, desirability, and job market.

New for the 2024-2025 report, U.S. News updated its methodology to analyze city-based data rather than metropolitan area data. Secondly, the report's annual survey decided to place greater weight on a city's "value and job market" while "weights for desirability and quality of life took a slight dip" on the grading scale.

"Rising concerns about career prospects, housing affordability and increased cost of goods and services are reflected in this year’s rankings," said U.S. News loans expert and reporter Erika Giovanetti in a press release. "While quality of life remains the top priority for many Americans, a city’s value and job market are becoming increasingly important for those looking for a place to live."

There's many factors that draw folks to Houston, among them our city's diversity, the highly esteemed schools, top universities, and much more. Houston is also a great place for retirees looking to settle down without compromising on the big city lifestyle. The city truly has something for everyone.

The good news continues: Houston additionally moved up two spots to take No. 8 on the report's Best Place to Live in Texas list for 2024. The Bayou City ranked No. 10 last year.

Elsewhere in Texas
The recent focus on city-based data was likely a major factor that fueled Houston's improvement in the statewide and national rankings, but it also favorably shifted nine other Texas cities.

Austin – which previously ranked No. 40 in last year's rankings – became the only city to represent the Lone Star State among the top 10 best places to live in 2024. The Texas Capital jumped up 31 spots to claim No. 9 nationally, due to its "high desirability and job market scores," the report said.

Three cities in the Rio Grande Valley also ranked higher than Houston, suggesting that South Texas may be a better place to live than East Texas. The border towns of McAllen (No. 48) and Brownsville (No. 87) climbed into the overall top 100 this year after formerly ranking No. 137 and No. 134 last year. Meanwhile, Corpus Christi moved up from No. 132 last year to No. 77 in 2024.

Naples, Florida won the gold medal as the No. 1 best place to live in the U.S. in 2024. Rounding out the top five are Boise, Idaho (No. 2); Colorado Springs, Colorado (No. 3); Greenville, South Carolina (No. 4); and Charlotte, North Carolina (No. 5).

Here's how other Texas cities faired in 2024's Best Places to Live report:

  • No. 62 – El Paso (up from No. 128 last year)
  • No. 89 – San Antonio (up from No. 103 last year)
  • No. 95 – Dallas (up from No. 113 last year)
  • No. 99 – Beaumont (up from No. 131 last year)
  • No. 107 – Killeen (up from No. 122 last year)
The full report and its methodology can be found on realestate.usnews.com.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

For better or for worse, automation is going to have an affect on specific jobs in Houston. Getty Images

New report identifies the Houston jobs that are most likely going to be affected by automation

the robots are coming

A new report from UpSkill Houston, a workforce initiative of the Greater Houston Partnership, puts the implications of workplace automation into stark focus. According to the report, more than 50 percent of middle-skill jobs in the Houston area face a higher-than-average risk of being upset by automation.

Peter Beard, who leads UpSkill Houston and is senior vice president for workforce development at the Greater Houston Partnership, says this means technology will "get embedded even more in the workplace than it's ever been before. … People's jobs will change because they have to work alongside technology. And there will be some jobs that get displaced because of that technology."

"Robots are coming," he adds, "but they're not going to replace us. We're going to have to figure out how to work beside them."

Middle-skill jobs require less than a four-year bachelor's degree but more than a high school diploma. In other words, jobs fitting into this middle ground might demand a two-year associate's degree or a training certificate from a technical school.

The report, released July 16, points out that middle-skill occupations in manufacturing and construction, for instance, face a high risk of disruption as companies adopt technologies that automate tasks, such as prefabrication of building materials. By contrast, the report notes, automation places jobs in the health care and service sectors in far less jeopardy because they generally rely on tasks that can't easily be automated. For example, jobs in health care often require social skills that can't be replicated through automation, which includes artificial intelligence, robotics, and machine learning.

However, jobs in health care aren't entirely immune from shifts in the workplace. The report indicates jobs in workforce segments like health care, sales and office support, IT, management, and drafting now require a medium or high level of digital skills.

That being said, all workers — regardless of their industry, occupation, or education — must embrace solid digital skills in order to succeed in the workforce, the report states. Beard says that to compete in today's workforce, a high school graduate must be proficient in Microsoft's Word, Excel, and PowerPoint programs as well as in a customer relationship management platform like Salesforce.

The findings in the UpSkill Houston report come at a pivotal time for the Houston economy, given the job-slashing double whammy of the coronavirus pandemic and the oil slump. The pandemic "has accelerated and accentuated a fundamental change that has been underway — a change in the education and skills needed to be successful in the workforce today and into the future," the report states.

That change poses particular challenges for low-skill and middle-skill workers in the Houston area, according to the report. The report recommends that workforce development stakeholders, including employers, schools, and community organizations, build a regional "framework" aimed at ramping up skillsets so workers can seize increasingly elevated career opportunities.

"It all starts with the employer. The employer is in the best position to know what skills they need today and what skills they are likely to need tomorrow," Beard says. "Fundamentally, we're trying to create a supply chain of talent that meets the needs of our economy and the needs of our employers."

But that takes employers collaborating with schools to ensure those skills are being taught, he says, and employers and schools motivating students to consider jobs that incorporate those skills.

Beard assigns those skills to four categories:

  • Technical skills
  • Digital skills
  • Soft skills, such as communication
  • Problem-solving skills

"This whole push we've had that everyone should go to college and get a four-year degree has made folks consider jobs that don't require a four-year college degree to be menial," Beard says. "That same mentality has also permeated the employers. How many job descriptions have we seen that put a four-year degree requirement on them but that don't require four years of college education?"

New study shows Houston has more job openings than any other Texas city. Photo by Tim Leviston/Getty Images

Houston becomes job capital of Texas with highest number of openings in the state

Get to work

As all good Houstonians know, the Bayou City reigns as the energy capital of the world. But, as it turns out, Houston also ranks as the job capital of Texas.

In October, a daily average of 4,188 job openings were listed in Houston — more than any other place in Texas. That's according to a review by data-mining company Thinkum of online job postings at thousands of companies.

In terms of the sheer number of daily job postings, Houston ranked fifth among U.S. cities in October, according to Thinkum. Seattle held the No. 1 spot (10,291 average daily job listings).

Thinkum's top 20 also included Austin (No. 6), with a daily average of 3,227 job postings, and Dallas (No. 12), with 2,685.

The abundance of job listings in Houston can be attributed, in part, to its status as one of the top U.S. metro areas for corporate relocations and expansions, as ranked by Site Selection magazine. In 2017, the Houston welcomed 196 new and expanded corporate facilities.

"Houston is the most diverse city in the U.S. and companies thrive in our region. We are powered by a highly skilled and well-trained talent base that enjoys an excellent quality of life," Bob Harvey, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership, said in March.

Career website LinkedIn says hiring in the Houston metro area climbed 14.3 percent in September 2018 compared with September 2017. On a seasonally adjusted basis (removing predictable variations for seasonal hiring), hiring went up 0.8 percent from August to September, according to LinkedIn.

That's good news for the Houston area, as the unemployment rate in September was 4.1 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared with 3.4 percent in Dallas-Fort Worth and 2.9 percent in Austin.

A February report from Taylor Smith Consulting noted that the Houston economy had been in recovery mode after the collapse in oil prices and in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. However, one expert says Houston has now mostly bounced back from the economic slump.

Helping fuel Houston's economic recovery are initiatives like Houston Exponential, a new nonprofit designed to accelerate startup growth and, as a result, job growth. Formation of Houston Exponential was announced in October.

"The world calls Houston a knowledge capital because of the incredible concentration of ideas and innovation in our great city," Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in October. "Technology innovation and a vibrant startup community are key drivers to Houston's present as well as our future. Through [Houston Exponential], we will create new, high-paying jobs, grow our startup and technology community, make accessing entrepreneurship capital available to all of our citizens, improve our quality of life, and lead this culture of innovation that inspires each and every one of us."

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This story originally appeared on CultureMap.

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Houston healthtech startup raises $30M to scale surgical healing gel

fresh funding

Houston-based healthtech startup TYBR Health has raised a $30 million Series A round to scale its B3 GEL System, which helps protect tendons from scarring after surgery.

The round was led by Minneapolis-based Vensana Capital and Cleveland-based Mutual Capital Partners, with participation from Denver-based Neovate Capital Partners and existing investors, according to a news release from the company.

TYBR Health said it plans to use the funding to broaden the B3 GEL System's clinical applications, expand commercialization and conduct studies to evaluate its ability to protect tissue and improve healing outcomes.

"Surgeons are exceptionally good at the structural repair, but the biology that follows is what determines how it heals. That part of the equation has gone largely unaddressed ... There's a shift underway across surgical specialties, from focusing almost entirely on the mechanical repair to also weighing the biological conditions that repair needs to succeed," Tim Keane, co-founder and CEO of TYBR Health, said in the news release. "This financing lets us reach more surgeons and generate the clinical evidence to move that shift forward."

As part of the financing round, Greg Banker of Vensana Capital and Liz Todia Zambory of Mutual Capital Partners will join the TYBR board, alongside independent director Aaron Smith.

"TYBR Health is addressing a gap surgeons have lived with for a long time, with a product that fits the way they already work," Zambory, principal at Mutual Capital Partners, added in the release. "We're excited to co-lead this round and support the company's growth."

TYBR was founded in 2020 and originated from the TMCi’s Biodesign fellowship and participated in the TMC's Accelerator for HealthTech. Its B3 GEL System is a flowable extracellular matrix hydrogel designed to protect tendons, ligaments, muscles, and the surrounding soft tissue while they heal from orthopedic surgery. It received FDA 510(k) clearance last June and launched an Australian clinical trial in the fall.

The B3 GEL System has been used in hand, wrist, shoulder, foot and ankle, and sports medicine procedures since it launched, according to the company, and was first used in the clinical setting earlier this year by Dr. Tammam Hanna with Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.

Houston space companies win NASA funding to build Mars exploration robots

mission to mars

Two Houston-area spacetech companies have landed a portion of a $17 million award from NASA to develop robots for exploring the surface of Mars, the agency announced this month.

Houston-based Inuitive Machines and Webster, Texas-based MEI Technologies, which does business as Aegis Aerospace, were among the seven companies selected to receive the funding from NASA's Science Transport and Robotic Innovation for Deployment and Exploration (STRIDE) initiative.

According to the release from NASA, the companies are tasked with creating "innovative mobility systems" that would allow future Mars missions to access more challenging terrain and difficult-to-reach regions of the planet, and to travel farther distances. NASA estimated that the work will begin this fall.

NASA solicited proposals for participants in the STRIDE initiative in January. The seven named companies are the first selected to participate in the program.

The additional five companies to receive STRIDE funding include:

"STRIDE demonstrates NASA’s commitment to strong public-private partnerships, allowing the agency to explore new approaches for Mars surface exploration while identifying key capability gaps and development needs for commercial systems that could operate and traverse realistic Martian environments," NASA shared in the announcement.

Last month, Intuitive Machines was awarded $148.3 million to deliver its Nova-C lander to the moon. The funding was part of $600 million the space agency awarded to three companies as part of its Moon Base Program and was Intuitive Machines' sixth task order under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Astrobotic was also one of the companies to land funding for the Moon Base program, as well as Austin-based Firefly Aerospace.

Around the same time, Firefly Aerospace was awarded a $13 million subcontract from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop technology for NASA’s SkyFall mission to Mars. The mission aims to deploy three Mars helicopters to "perform science and demonstrate airborne subsurface mapping and resource prospecting on the planet." Read more here.

SpaceX launches Starship test flight with most advanced Starlinks to date

Out in Space

SpaceX’s mammoth Starship rocket blasted off Friday, July 24, on another test flight stretching halfway around the world, this time releasing 20 of the most advanced Starlinks.

Towering 407 feet, Starship soared from the company’s base at the southern tip of Texas. NASA monitored the space-skimming flight, a critical step toward using the Starship as a lunar lander for moon crews.

The hourlong journey ended with a splashdown so soft that the spacecraft remained afloat in the Indian Ocean as the SpaceX webcast drew to a close, drawing cheers from employees back at the launch site.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX had replaced six of the 33 engines on the first-stage booster after they failed to ignite earlier in July, resulting in a last-second launch abort. The previous Starship flight in May also experienced engine trouble, which prevented the booster from making a controlled return.

This time, all of the engines fired at liftoff, but not enough of them lit back up for the booster's return, causing it to descend too fast and slam into the Gulf of Mexico. The spacecraft continued soaring eastward, popping out the Starlinks one by one 124 miles up before reentering.

It was the 13th flight of the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket, and the second this year of the new version dubbed V3. Like the previous demo, neither the booster nor spacecraft was meant to be saved, instead plunging into the sea.

The stainless steel, retro-looking spacecraft hovered upright over the Indian Ocean before lowering into the water, more than 10,000 miles from where the flight began.

It was the best reentry yet, according to SpaceX, with the intact booster floating amid just a few flames. Previous flights ended with the spacecraft engulfed in flames and exploding at splashdown — or rupturing in midair.

“We're really pumped about this,” said SpaceX engineer Kate Tice, calling it “lucky flight 13.”

The Starlinks accomplished all their jobs before reentering over the Indian Ocean.

After being ejected from the Starship’s Pez-like dispenser, the Starlinks managed to communicate via lasers with older Starlink models already in orbit. With more than 10,000 Starlinks currently providing internet, SpaceX boasts the world’s largest satellite constellation.

Six of the newly launched Starlinks carried cameras that photographed Starship’s heat shield at flight's end, beaming back amazingly crisp shots even as the spacecraft bobbed in the ocean. The heat shield was also equipped with sensors to measure the extreme pressure placed on the spacecraft during launch. Most of the heat shield’s thermal tiles were black, but some were deliberately painted white to simulate missing tiles, part of an experiment to test the shield’s robustness.

"We got all the heat shield data we needed and then some!" Musk said on X.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman offered congratulations. “Excited for what will be learned from this mission,” Isaacman noted on X.

SpaceX wants to make sure Starship’s heat shield can withstand the heat of entry before trying to return it to the Starbase launch pad near the Texas-Mexico border. The company already has used a pair of giant mechanical arms at the pad to capture a Starship booster. The company plans to do the same with the actual spacecraft, which is designed to be totally reusable.

NASA needs Starship to wrap up testing and reach orbit soon so the Artemis III astronauts — three Americans and one Italian — can practice docking their capsule with it next year.

Starship is also the vehicle with which Musk intends to build a city on Mars. He's already booking tourist trips to Mars, as well as the moon.

The latest test flight was delayed first by the July 16 launch abort, then again July 23 by thick clouds from Tropical Storm Bertha.

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