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Harvard Business Review Identifies the Problem with Today’s MBA Programs, and the Solution

05.06.06

Austin, Texas – One of the nation’s most prestigious academic publications has called out traditional MBA programs for their inherent weakness as well as identified a better approach.

“To have the Harvard Business Review write that ‘business schools are hiring professors with limited real-world experience and graduating students who are ill-equipped to wrangle with complex, unquantifiable issues’ is tremendous validation for what we are doing at the Acton MBA in Entrepreneurship program,” said Jeff Sandefer, a successful businessman and Master Teacher at Acton.

By contrast, students participating in the Acton program are taught by successful entrepreneurs. While the program lasts just 12 months, students typically spend between 80 to 90 hours each week, making tough decisions involving 300 real world case studies as well as selling products door-to-door and building assembly lines.

That real-world approach is missing in most traditional MBA programs, according to the article “How Business Schools Lost Their Way,” which was written by professors Warren G. Bennis and James O’Toole.

“Business professors too often forget that executive decision makers are not fact collectors; they are fact users and integrators,” the authors write. “Thus, what they need from educators is help in understanding how to interpret facts and guidance from experienced teachers in making decisions in the absence of clear facts.” Students are typically taught by “tenured professors who have never set foot inside a real business except as customers.”

Sandefer added that “the Acton MBA is the answer for students worried about the increasing irrelevance of the traditional MBA. More and more students are coming to Acton because they want a real business education, not just something out of a textbook.”

To read the entire article, visit http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu

About Acton MBA in Entrepreneurship

The Acton MBA in Entrepreneurship, based in Austin, Texas, is in only its second year of operations. The one-year program is taught by successful entrepreneurs and features intensive 80 to 90 hour work weeks, where students tackle real world problems and even sell products door-to-door. The student-faculty ratio is lower than any MBA program in the country, allowing students to develop strong bonds with their entrepreneur mentors

For more information, media should contact Holt Hackney at press@actonmba.com, or 512-478-8858, Ext. 115.

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