McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin

Congratulations to Sarah Prescott, MBA '26, on being named a 2026 Best & Brightest Executive MBA by Poets&Quants 🤘

Sarah balanced a VP role at American Campus Communities, EMBA coursework, and parenting twin daughters through their senior year of high school, all while building the skills to land her next role in agentic AI. On why she chose McCombs: "The program combines academic rigor and real-world application, which allowed me to immediately apply what I was learning in my role."

Read her full feature:

2026 Best & Brightest Executive MBA: Sarah Prescott, University of Texas (McCombs) Sarah Prescott, a graduate of the University of Texas, has been named a Poets&Quants Best & Brightest Executive MBA of 2026

Two of our graduate programs are getting new names to better reflect what our students are already learning in the classroom 🤘

Starting with the Class of 2028, our Master of Science in Business Analytics becomes the Master of Science in Business Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. Our Master of Science in Information Technology and Management becomes the Master of Science in Business Technology and Artificial Intelligence.

McCombs ranked No. 1 among Best Information Systems Master's Programs by U.S. News & World Report this year, a reflection of the rigor behind both programs.

Applications for both programs open Aug. 26.

McCombs M.S. Programs Get New Names - McCombs News and Magazine 10-month graduate programs renamed to highlight technical rigor and AI integration

New research from David Harrison, associate dean for research at McCombs, finds that new leaders have a real shot at driving organizational change, but only if employees already believe change is needed.

Harrison and five co-authors studied leadership transitions at 112 elementary schools from 2014 to 2017. When a new principal's style matched teachers' appetite for change, standardized test scores improved significantly two years later. When teachers were satisfied with the status quo, that same style was more likely to backfire.

To Create Change, New Leaders Should Read the Room - McCombs News and Magazine Fresh ideas can succeed if employees see the need but backfire if they’re happy with the status quo

Shopping for a used car? New McCombs research finds that buyers often pay more attention to the first digit on the odometer than the rest of the number, a psychological quirk called left-digit bias. That means a car with 49,999 miles can sell for up to $170 more than one at 50,000 miles, even though the actual difference is minor:

Odometer Inattention Costs Used Car Buyers - McCombs News and Magazine Due to left-digit bias, consumers pay extra for cars just under multiples of 10,000 miles

What's next starts now.

Applications for Fall 2027 entry to the Hildebrand MBA at Texas McCombs are open, across Full-Time, Weekend (Houston & Dallas), Evening (Austin), and Executive (Austin) programs.

Round 1 deadline is October 15. Get ahead of it by joining a virtual info session: Working Professional/Executive on August 14, Full-Time on August 20.

Details and registration at TexasMBAEvents.com 🤘

Accounting professor Sara Toynbee built an AI tool to measure business complexity. The most complex financial reports took stocks 7.9% longer to fully price in:

It’s Complicated: AI Measures Business Complexity - McCombs News and Magazine New model helps investors and regulators understand complex businesses and see their positive sides

A new issue of McCombs Magazine is landing in mailboxes now and is available online 🤘

Leading the Ledger Forward brings together six voices from across the profession: students, faculty, researchers, and alumni of the McCombs accounting program to explore where the field is headed. The people featured are steering Big 4 firms and venture capital, shaping regulatory policy and preparing students for jobs that don't exist yet. What emerges is a profession that has moved well beyond the numbers, with accountants now at the center of major business decisions.

The issue also marks a major milestone for the department: the naming of the Jonathan K. Shulkin Department of Accounting, made possible by alumnus Jon Shulkin's gift, along with a welcome letter from Dean Staats.

See the digital version: https://news.mccombs.utexas.edu/magazine/special-issue-2026/

Our researchers partnered with KPMG on a new study looking at how early-career professionals perform when working with AI. The findings, also featured in Harvard Business Review, are eye-opening: half of participants outperformed AI working alone, but skills like critical thinking and industry knowledge didn't predict who succeeded. What mattered most was how people used AI, whether they asked questions, tested assumptions, and pushed back on results, rather than just accepting what AI produced.

The research was presented this week at the KPMG Tech & Innovation Conference, and we're grateful for the partnership behind it.

🤘 https://link.hbr.org/view/6a1f1c59a89382216f040172rtkrz.1oaw/9867ed58

We're proud to partner with the Cockrell School of Engineering on a new program built for the leaders of tomorrow. The Cockrell-McCombs B.S./M.S. Honors Program will give students both the analytical rigor of an engineering degree and the strategic thinking of a McCombs business education, preparing them to lead at the intersection of technology and business from day one 🤘

New Multidisciplinary Program To Develop the Next Generation of Engineering Business Leaders The five-year B.S./M.S. program, one of the first in the nation, will begin taking applications Aug. 1.

In a study of 523 early-career professionals, some people got better results than AI working alone, while others matched or even fell short of it, even though they had similar skills and experience. New research from McCombs and KPMG, published in Harvard Business Review, found that the top performers weren't necessarily the most skilled on paper. Instead, they knew how to direct AI, ask it the right questions, and push its work further:

Shaping Early-Career Success in the Age of AI - McCombs News and Magazine A UT Austin and KPMG study finds that uniquely human skills create value only when they are applied to direct and improve AI