QS Ranks UC Davis MSBA No. 1 Globally for Return on Investment for Fourth Year

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Key Takeaways

QS has ranked the UC Davis Master of Science in Business Analytics:

• No. 1 in the world for return on investment for the fourth year in a row.
   
• No. 5 globally for “Value for the Money”—the seventh year in the top 10.
   
• No. 17 overall in the U.S.
   
• No. 39 globally among 200+ programs.
   
• No. 1 worldwide for gender balance of students.

With fall classes in the UC Davis Master of Science in Business Analytics program starting next week, new student Spencer Holsinger is eager to build on his computer science background and launch a new career from the year-long program grounded in real-world experience with a proven track record of job placement.

After graduating in 2023 from San Francisco State University with a degree in computer science, Holsinger and many like him entered a historically barren computer science job market.

"I genuinely wasn't sure if I would ever be able to use my degree professionally," said Holsinger, who has been teaching math and computer science in a San Francisco Bay Area middle school. That's when he began looking at grad school and discovered the UC Davis MSBA program.

"I chose the MSBA program primarily because it felt like a great way to utilize my computer science degree while also moving away from a strictly software engineering/computer science focus. The program’s high ranking for ROI really stood out to me."

— New MSBA student Spencer Holsinger

Holsinger joins fellow academically and professionally accomplished students in the eighth class of the UC Davis MSBA program, which continues to cement its reputation as a community where students from across the globe can thrive and shape their future success as leaders in data analytics.

Reputation Reinforced by Top QS Rankings

That excellence has been recognized by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), which once again ranked the UC Davis MSBA program No. 1 in the world for return on investment in its influential annual master’s in business analytics rankings released September 17.

This is the fourth consecutive year the San Francisco-based UC Davis MSBA program has garnered the top ROI ranking.

QS describes itself as the world's largest global higher education network, specializing in the analysis of institutions worldwide.

Connected to the ROI rating, QS also ranked the UC Davis MSBA program No. 5 for “Value for the Money,” a measure that considers tuition costs, opportunity costs of attending vs. working, salary growth, career progression and payback period.

The UC Davis MSBA also earned accolades as the top program for gender balance among students, which reflects the percentage of the class who are women.  

Overall, QS ranked the UC Davis MSBA No. 17 among programs in the U.S. and No. 39 globally.  

“Value for the Money” Reflects Alumni Success

The return-on-investment metric is one of several indicators that earned the UC Davis MSBA a No. 5 ranking worldwide for “Value for the Money”—the seventh year the program is among the top 10 globally. The UC Davis MSBA tallied 98.6 out of 100 points in QS's “Value for the Money” category.

Salary growth and career progression figure into the value of the degree. The average salary of the UC Davis MSBA class of 2024 six months after graduation topped $106,000. The program’s location in San Francisco and deep connections in Silicon Valley open many opportunities for MSBA graduates in the Bay Area and beyond.

Amazon continues to be a top employer, reflecting the success of a strong alumni network within the company and a newly launched mentorship program. Other key employers over the past two years include Apple, Adobe, Amex, Amplytics, the Federal Reserve Bank, Google, J.P. Morgan, Meta, Microsoft, Pinterest, TikTok, Walmart, in addition to other tech, biotech, finance and retail corporations as well as startups.

New MSBA student Nima Hejazi graduated from Sonoma State University in 2024 and has been a software developer and program support specialist at Santa Rosa Junior College. He's recently launched a blog about business analytics.  

“Return on investment in education is very important to me. When I discovered that the UC Davis MSBA program had been ranked number one in the world for ROI for several years in a row, I knew it had to be my top choice.”

— New MSBA student Nima Hejazi

How the QS Rankings Work

The QS Master's in Business Analytics rankings considered 201 programs in 39 locations worldwide. Data was collected using three surveys; the QS Global Employer Survey, the QS Global Academic Survey and a survey completed by the business schools themselves.

The QS rankings methodology is based on 13 criteria that form the basis of five weighted key indicators that programs were evaluated: employability (30%), alumni outcomes (20%), thought leadership (20%), value for the money (20%), and student and faculty diversity (10%).

According to QS, the 10-year return on investment metric maps “average post-graduation, taking into account forgone salary as well as tuition and cost of living (using Mercer Quality of City Living Ranking). We also take into account the percentage of graduates accepting employment within six months of finishing their studies.”

Three Recent Rankings Recognize UC Davis for Research, Social Mobility, Value

The University of California, Davis, has received accolades for its research, the value for the dollar and the social mobility it offers graduates in three separate rankings published last month.

Forbes named UC Davis to its Top 25 Public Colleges in the nation in rankings released August 26. The magazine noted that UC Davis undergraduate students with a median of $11,000 in debt—the lowest among the public standouts.  

The campus placed 12th among public universities and 23rd among America’s Best Colleges for Research in the Washington Monthly 2025 College Guide and Rankings released August 24.

Princeton Review’s The Best 391 Colleges: 2026 Edition also ranked UC Davis for making an impact, career placement and value for the money. Those rankings were released August 12.

UC Davis Position on Rankings: Weigh All Factors

A world-class university, UC Davis is highly ranked for how it transforms students’ lives, the impact of its research, the excellence of its academic programs, sustainability and more. The university performs self-evaluations and also appreciates the value of third-party assessments.

However, ranking methods vary, change over time and can be subjective. UC Davis focuses on those rankings that most closely align with its mission and values—including serving the public good, inclusiveness and equity, and social mobility—and in national rankings looks most closely at its standing among public universities.

UC Davis encourages prospective students and their families to weigh rankings among other factors in their college decision, talk with counselors and UC Davis admissions advisors, and, if possible, visit the campus.

Learn More about the 2026 QS MSBA Rankings

• QS Business Master's Rankings 2026: Business Analytics
• QS Business Master's Rankings methodology