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.