The MBA Express

Lucky for Widowski, there's a new game in town. In February he enrolled in an evening accelerated program at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business. For a few thousand dollars more, this program would take 18 months — and about one-quarter less class time — to complete. Internship? Scuttled. Classes meet only a few nights a week, so he's able to keep his full-time work schedule — and weekend time with his wife and two young children. To boot, the program comes loaded with time-saving perks — from free textbook delivery to catered classroom dinners — which associate dean Gerald Keim calls "the concierge model" for the MBA program. "We're like a Four Seasons hotel," he says.

Welcome to the world of the fast-track MBA. In a renewed effort to capture the booming market of working adults, B-schools are not just rewriting the book on what it takes to earn the diploma, they're ripping pages from it. They're dispensing with the broad-based curriculum and sprouting specialized versions of the degree. (Wine Business MBA, anyone?) They're cutting course hours, changing graduation requirements and, in some cases, offering one-year degrees — half the usual time. And they're making convenience a top priority. Even the most prestigious schools are pushing the boundaries of tradition: At Northwestern University, home to the nation's fifth-highest-ranked B-school (according to the U.S. News & World Report rankings), students can earn an MBA by attending its new Saturdays-only classes. Total tuition: $88,000.

Schools say they're trying to be more progressive by responding to folks such as working moms, as well as capitalizing on the growing cadre of midcareer professionals looking to sharpen their business acumen and fatten their paychecks. But fast-track MBAs are also a clear response to a disturbing slump in full-time enrollment. According to the Graduate Management Admission Council, 56% of MBA programs saw full-time applications drop between 2003 and 2006. That's twice the number of schools that saw a slide in the previous three years. The dilemma for some schools was obvious: Shake up the curriculum, or lose tuition dollars to competitors. "A lot of this has to do with the revenue side of the equation," says James Danko, president of the MBA Roundtable, a consortium of business schools. "Most schools know this is where the market is."

All of which raises some obvious questions, such as: How much of an education — and career lift — are these business leaders of the future getting? Certainly, the schools say they're maintaining standards and that catering to convenience doesn't have to mean watering down homework. But the list of critics pooh-poohing the whole notion is growing, and at least one university shuttered its fast-track program. In the end, the looming question may be how Big Business will look at the change — whether it will still roll out the red carpet for a new breed of diploma-toting execs.

Ever since Harvard Business School opened its doors in 1908 to the nation's first MBA class, the rigor of the classic B-school program has become practically the stuff of legend. For two years the student, just happy for a crack at the land of milk and honey, endures grueling, pressure-cooker days, with long classes, infinite group projects and a nonstop schedule of clubs and networking events. Summer off? Not in this program. The traditional MBA student spends his poring over financial data and proving his mettle to employers during an intensive three-month internship.

That venerable model remains intact at many schools, but it's far from the only one nowadays. Since the '60s schools have been offering part-time evening degrees that sacrifice most of the on-campus extras — and, usually, the internship — in the process. Over the past decade, facing a rash of dropouts jumping on the phantom dot-com gravy train, many schools also started to rethink their degree requirements and cut credit requirements so students could finish faster. Turns out they had another venerable model to look to — the one in Europe, where business schools have long handed out diplomas after only a year.

But cutting curriculum is only the beginning of the MBA revolution these days. Like good marketers, school officials have spotted a need for more-specialized degrees, be they MBAs in health care, engineering or, yes, the wine business (at Sonoma State University, where future vintners can enroll in classes like Global Wine Business, or Marketing and Sales Strategies for Wine). Other schools have fashioned programs around more-practical needs and concerns, including some as pedestrian as running into too much rush-hour traffic on the way to class. That was one of the catalysts behind weekend-only programs.

But how about not setting foot on campus? Last year the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, ranked 12th in the nation, tiptoed into a diploma-mill staple — the online degree. There, highly experienced execs take one-third of their MBA classes virtually. The school, based in Char­lottes­ville, Va., says it attracts more business leaders from beyond its local area this way. Darden students still attend classes in person once a month, but at George Washington University, a fully online program has already arrived, allowing students from coast to coast to "attend" classes together. One example: Ahsan Awan, the CEO of a California-based drug-development company earned his degree without taking a single class in person. He says classmates have logged in from as far away as Dubai.

Not surprisingly, many of these practices are drawing snickers from Ivy types. But schools say the new MBA programs are less about coddling and more about tailoring fast-track degrees to the deeper skill set of working part-timers. After all, a green 23-year-old who's never set foot in a corporate suite probably benefits from a class like Career Leadership more than a seasoned workplace warrior. "They're really classes that compensate," says Pepperdine's Mooney. And you won't hear any apologies from schools offering online degrees. "We have not had any problems" with the online degree, says John Fizel, the director of the iMBA program at Penn State World Campus. "I think the problem is, there are too many misconceptions about what an online degree is."

Still, the debate over MBA 2.0 may be just getting started. Though schools ranked as high as Wharton and Columbia have been offering part-time programs to a highly select group of executives, nearly all the elite schools have been judicious about dickering with their time-honored curricula. Top-ranked Harvard says it hasn't explored part-timing, since the school model relies on such a high degree of time commitment and classroom participation. Second-ranked Stanford sticks to tradition, it says, because it doesn't see part-time students getting the same "transformational" outcome. "It's very hard to work and go to school at the same time," says Dan Rudolph, associate dean for operations. "We just don't believe they'll get the same learning experience."

The fact is, he adds, deep-pocketed schools can afford to hold the line against market-driven programs. Stanford doesn't need part-time degrees "because of the generosity of our alumni," he says. "That formula works for us." It's an argument at least some schools won't deny. "There's less pressure to innovate their programs," says Brent Chrite, associate dean at the University of Arizona. Enrollment there for full-time students dropped 22% from 2002 to 2006, which promptly led to shorter, accelerated programs — and a recent spike in part-time enrollment. "There's this notion that an MBA must consist of two years," he says. "That doesn't mean it's the optimal way."

So what is an accelerated MBA program like for most students? Don't even joke with Catherine Walker about part-timers having it easier. Every Saturday she heads to Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management not by car or train — but by plane. A 30-year-old service manager at General Electric in Minneapolis, she spends her weekdays managing a staff of 18, then hops a 7 a.m. flight to Chicago every Saturday. She describes her classmates as an equally dedicated, "very professional group of people" with long résumés and a propensity for substantive, experience-driven discussion that recent college grads might not have. Back at Pepperdine, Arlene Samore, a 27-year-old retail manager enrolled in the Morning MBA, applauds her school's rigor too, saying that between her 50 hours at work, eight hours of class and 15-plus hours of homework each week, she's kissed her social life — and regular sleep schedule — goodbye. "My life is pretty much work and school. That's it."

At the end of the day, the most pressing concern, usually, for any B-school student is gainful employment. Ask any recent grad and he'll tell you that even though the job market was better this year, the plum positions are getting tougher to nail down. How companies will view the new crop of students is anyone's guess. At General Electric, manager of commercial development programs Erin Dillard says the company looks for candidates who have strong communication, analytical and leadership skills, no matter what program they picked. But corporate hiring managers from GE to IBM admit that, while anyone is welcome to apply, they generally recruit from full-time MBA programs. "It's not that the company won't hire part-time graduates," says Kara Radcliffe, a marketing manager at Honeywell who volunteers twice a year to help her company scout new MBA talent. "It's just that we don't proactively go out and recruit them."

Indeed, some of the job "hit" rates from B-schools themselves might make some fast-trackers choke on their tuition bills: This year 20% of part-timers at New York University who interviewed on campus reported getting the work they wanted, compared with 90% of full-time students, according to dean of students Gary Fraser. Of course, part-time professionals aren't always looking for an instant new job, but some schools seem to be stacking the odds against them. At the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, part-timers are banned from many of the corporate networking and recruiting events full-timers enjoy, and company interviews are invite-only. This year fewer than 15% of them will score interviews through the school. "Our part-time students, in general, are a somewhat different breed" who don't need as much recruiting help, says Julie Morton, associate dean for career services.

Maybe so, but critics say that some fast-track programs may simply be moving, well, a little too fast — even in a world now measured in nanoseconds. That turned out to be the case at the University of Denver, an early pioneer of the hurry-up movement. Earlier this decade Denver students could polish off an MBA in 12 months. But after three years the school went back to offering only longer programs; the faculty felt that too many "critical" aspects of the curriculum had been compromised. For his part, Denver's Senior Associate Dean William Silver says he's not ready to pass judgment on the whole notion, but remembers seeing fast-trackers who simply didn't have time to prepare for class presentations. "We saw some unevenness," he says. "We saw some gaps."