By Lauren Lavelle and Janie Ho

As of late July, the program has 10 admitted students, but with a mid-September start date, the bulk of the applications will be received in August, school officials said. Two sessions, one beginning in September and one in April, 2007, are set. The cost is $23,000.

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Empresa Offers "Global" Program
The Instituto de Empresa Business School in Spain has recently instituted what it says is the world's first global online MBA.

Fifty-five students from 24 countries, some as far away as Colombia and the Virgin Islands, participate in the Global Communities MBA program. The key difference between the Global Communities MBA and other online MBAs is the level of interaction between students and teachers, says Empresa's Jean-Marie Winikates. "In classes, all participants are connected by Webcam and microphone," he says. "This flexibility goes a long way towards recreating a 'normal' classroom experience."

To draw these participants together, professors hold workshops and seminars in 15 cities around the world where students have a chance to meet face-to-face. Most of the instruction is filtered through online sessions during which students use weekly videoconferences to solve problems, ask questions, and review notes.

The school says the program, which costs about €34,000 ($43,400), is aimed at candidates who don't want to interrupt their careers to take time off to study at a campus. It can be completed in 12 or 18 months.

Although the program shares many of the same features as other distance learning programs, school officials tout the use of virtual communities of alumni, professors, and executives that focus on specific industries, job functions, and geographic locations. Students can choose which communities to join and continue using the online community after graduation.

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Sleepless in Palo Alto
Stanford's business school hopes its newly revised curriculum is enough to keep students awake and alert. But should that fail, Ajay Kapur, writing in the B-school's newspaper, the The Stanford Business Reporter, has his own suggestion for what should be taught: sleep. The idea stemmed from his "Sleep and Dreams" class, a popular course offered to Stanford students about sleep debt.

William Dement, the noted sleep researcher who teaches the class, told BusinessWeek that sleep debt is comparable to financial debt: "If someone has money problems, they can't get ahead, buy a house, or do other things they would normally like to." Similarly, with sleep debt, once students start skimping on sleep, they acquire hours of debt and very rarely are students at their peak.

"Students, like most Americans, carry 50 hours or more of sleep debt, decreasing their performance and productivity, and impairing reaction times," says Dement.

Employers may have an army of employees who are impaired and don't even know it. According to Dement, the average person suffers from sleep debt. However, as in countries where everyone has a certain disease, sufferers become less aware of it because they are surrounded by others with the same ailment.

According to Dement, students dance around their drowsiness until they make sleep a higher priority. Dement says his class helps change this. "It teaches them a better way to live," says Dement. Using sleep journals and risk monitors, students can measure their progress. And based on the popularity of the class, it's safe to say students don't find it a snooze.

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