B-school with a difference : No Professors. Only Entrepreneurs

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B-schools are known for producing employees and not entrepreneurs. Most of the B-school grads I know, accepted the high-paying job; and after the honeymoon is over, are all frustrated and looking for answers to a basic question:

Is this what I really want to do? What’s my calling?

How about a B-school run by entrepreneurs, for the entrepreneurs and even taught by entrepreneurs.

Welcome to Acton’s 1 year MBAE program (MBA in Entrepreneurship). Started by Jeff Sandefer (a Harvard MBA, now President of the energy investment firm Sandefer Capital Partners), Acton’s mantra is that only real-life-entrepreneurs can teach entrepreneurship.

Professors@ Acton aren’t those regular arm-chaired (read *theoretical*) teachers, but entrepreneur-teachers who are running their own businesses(or leading VC firms) and can give practical teachings and no BS/yada-yada…

As a student, you will not just deal with *Harvard-borrowed* case studies, but will also:

• sell a real product as part of one class
• run an assembly line set up on campus that manufactures circuit boards.

And now the most interesting part – Tuition fee. $17,500 per semester,i.e. $35,000 for the whole course.

But the first semester’s check is returned at graduation, and the second semester is free. After graduation, students are still on the hook for the $35,000 and are asked to contribute 10% of their salary until the tab is paid off. If a student is disappointed with the program, the debt is erased!!

So all you future MBAs, find out “What’s your calling”.

It is not the critic who counts,
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled,
or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena;
whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly;
who errs and comes short again and again;
who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy course;
who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly;
so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
–A great quote by Theodore Roosevelt:

Fly high.

Links: Acton site: BW’s coverage | Available: VC’s $100 million|Bollywood movies to watch before 30

Filed under: entrepreneurship,MBA