Coming Back for More

ALMOST 2000 graduating Business School students won't go to Commencement this year. While the Masters of Business Administration (MBA) graduates will be there waving their dollar bills and being booed by the crowd, the 1800 corporate professionals who pass through the B-School's executive education programs every year will have already gone back to the business world.

The B-School hosts 13 programs each year for business people. The largest and most prominent of these, the Advanced Management Program (AMP), brings in 480 senior level corporate executives every year from all over the world.

The program, which will graduate its 94th class this December, was born in 1943 as the War Production Training Course to teach business managers how to cope with meeting World War II production demands, according to Jay W. Lorsch, the program's faculty chairman. Since 1943 it has trained 11,000 executives in general management, financial and strategic planning skills.

When a corporation sends one of its top executives to the 13-week program, it continues to pay his salary--as well as the $19,500 AMP bill. Though Kirsten Professor of Human Relations Lorsch acknowledges that the fee is steep for three months' room, board and tuition, he says it is comparable with similar executive programs offered by other universities. "One way to think of the fee is as a donation."

The Advance Management Program uses case studies, not lectures, to bring real world business problems into the classroom. Almost all the AMP students have been in the business world for at least 20 years, and "if you try to lecture to these people, you do them a disservice," says Ralph James, the program's administrative chairman.

Corporate officials, like Anthony I. Marchio, General Motors administrator for executive compensation, say the program is worth the price. "We feel the AMP is an investment in our people and it will eventually come back to the company," says Marchio.

GM now has four employees enrolled in the program and has been sending executives to it for more than 20 years. Marchio says the automating grant likes the Harvard program because of its comprehensive approach and its state of the art content. The program covers two areas in particular, computers and strategic business planning, that GM thinks will help its executives "anticipate and react to change" in the future, Marchio adds.

AS DOES THE MBA program, the AMP uses case studies to bring real world business problems into the classroom for discussion. In the first place, "the case study is one of the basic tenets of the Harvard Business School. It's also one of the best teaching methods," says Ralph James. AMP administrative chairman. But secondly, relying strictly on lectures wouldn't work because almost every. AMP participant has been in the business world for at least 20 years. "If you try to lecture to these people you do them a disservice. Each AMP class has 1600 years of business experience," James explains.

One case in the business ethics portion of the AMP curriculam involved the social responsibility of business. The case, which has not yet been covered this session, raised such questions as, during what kinds of IA programs should business advertise. Should businesses buy stock of South African companies that support the apartheid regime.

The eight full-time AMP professors work more like orchestra conductors than speaker explains, James: "The professor is not so much there to teach, but to orchestrate discussion." Both AMP classrooms are arranged in a horseshoe shape and participants sit on different levels, so that; student can see and talk with all the classmates easily.

One AMP professor who received top ratings from past and present students interviewed. Samuel I. Haves III, Schitt Professor of Investment Banking says he usually begins a class by posing a question to a student rather than lecturing. "I will call on a person for their analysis of the case's situation, but we don't try to embarass people," says Hayes. But, Hayes explains that the AMP professor can't just sit back and let the class run its course. "I have to know everything that might possibly come up.

THE AMP WORKLOAD heavy three and a half hours of class a day and discussion sessions six times a week. Still one graduate of last prime program, Burl Osborne, senior vice president of The Dallas Morning News, says his AMP experience was relaxing.

"It was a time to get off the treadmill for a while and reflect," said Osborne. Besides being a refuge from the survival-of-the-fittest business world and an educational experience. Osborne says the AMP was "extremely broadening" because he got to meet people from all over the world "Something will pass as the mail once or twice a week from people I met at Harvard," says Osborne.

Osborne remembers another antidote devised by some of his classmates to relieve tension--an underground newspaper dubbed AMPoon that made satirical jabs at faculty members. Osborne, who is also editor of the Dallas daily, say the the spoof paper "took great liberties" with Hayes in particular "because he was so good."

Hayes found out, but he says he wasn't offended in fact, he says he learned something from the paper, "Sometimes you learn things that bother people when they spool won in a way that tells you something," he says.

One of the Osborne's classmates last spring, Larry J. Larkin, senior vice president of Equitable Life Assurance Society, says that before he came to AMP he approached business problems in a "global" way, but now breaks them down into smaller more workable parts. "I've changed my approach to situations. After using the case method I approach problems in a more systematic, analytic way," says Larkin.

But directors of two other top-rated executive education programs, Stanford's Executive Program and MIT's Program for Senior Executives, say they are skeptical of Harvard's exclusive use of the case study.

"Some courses don't lend themselves well to the case study method," says Fran Rinaldi, assistant director of Stanford's program. Rinaldi cites international economics and business-government relations as areas which need a more formal treatment.

The Stanford program cost companies $5000 less than Harvard's AMP, and it runs only once a year during the summer for only eight weeks. But Rinaldi says that some smaller corporations that can't afford to have their top workers away from the office for a long time prefer Stanford's shorter program.

MIT runs two nine-week program per year for the same price as Harvard's, and it also chooses an eclectic approach to teaching. "Our faculty are free to consider what teaching method works best to get their message across," explains Scott Duncan, administrative head of the MIT program.

Lorsch says one advantage the AMP has over the Stanford and MIT programs is that it isn't a "window" of its MBA program Stanford and MIT uses MBA professors for their exclusive programs while Harvard's professors as devoted exclusively for the AMP.

THIS YEAR'S AMP class boasts a 40 percent foreign enrollment. But it has only six women in a class of 160. Josephine A. Johnson, one of this year's female minority and vice president of Equitable Life Assurance's central services group, says she had a difficult first three weeks trying to adjust to living with seven male suitemates.

Johnson, who denies falling into the stereotype that depicts women as being less aggressive than their male counterparts in the business atmosphere, says she has more problems coping with AMP activities outside the classroom than inside, particularly socializing. "I've never had problems with classroom discussions. I participate in class even if I don't know all the answers," she says.

A graduate of last spring's AMP, Kathryn A. Paul of Kaiser Permanent Medical Care Program, was one of the four women executives in her program. Paul who says she didn't worry about making a quantitative input to AMP discussions. "It's not so much how much you say, but the quality of what you say." Paul says came to the AMP with a differentapproach to business problems from many of her classmates because Kaiser is a non-profit company. "I contributed to a different perspective in the classroom."