The master of business administration (MBA) is a graduate degree offered by American and other universities around the world. Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business created the first MBA program in 1900. In 2001 there were 344 accredited business schools in the United States, of which 188 graduated 50 or more MBA students in the previous year. In major CORPORATIONs, the MBA is often a requirement for advancement into the upper ranks of MANAGEMENT. Many junior executives have liberal arts or technical backgrounds. As these people progress in their careers beyond their initial area of expertise and into positions supervising other workers, an MBA provides the needed skills to survive and prosper. In the United States, MBA programs come in several varieties: full-time, part-time, executive, and on-line programs. Traditionally MBA programs were either full-time or part-time night programs. Some business schools would not accept students who did not have at least three years of business experience. Since MBA programs generally do not assume students have an undergraduate degree in business, they typically start with condensed (and intense) background courses in the basic areas of business: management, marketing, finance, economics, and accounting. Students then choose areas to study further: HUMAN RESOURCES, production management, INTERNATIONAL MARKETING, LOGISTICS, or other specialized business areas. Executive MBA programs meet less frequently than traditional programs, often for long weekends with Web-based assignments and communication in between meetings. Most MBA programs emphasize teamwork and use case study methods to train students. There is intense competition among MBA programs for national recognition. A 2000 poll of MBA recruiters rated Dartmouth’s Tuck school as the top program in the country, followed by Carnegie Mellon University, Yale University, the University of Michigan, and Northwestern University. Rounding out the top ten were Purdue University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, Southern Methodist University, and the University of Texas at Austin. Graduates of these and other major MBA programs command starting salaries often in excess of $100,000 per year. Management consulting firms are the major recruiters of new MBA graduates, though just a few years ago start-up DOT-COMS were hiring many new MBAs.