One hundred and fifty prosperous looking students at the Business School packed their bags and left yesterday. This is a legitimate exit, however, because the gentlemen involved are only part-time students. Away from Cambridge they are all high business executives. In Cambridge they are part of the Business School's Advanced Management Program, a concentrated course for experienced business leaders.

The histus the A.M.P.'s are currently enjoying is designed to give them a chance to catch up briefly on what's going on at the office. For some of them, getting to their firms will involve a substantial trip because the businessmen come for their courses from every state in the Union. A few firms consider the advanced management training valuable enough to send their proteges from abroad. Last year, even an Indonesian company sent a representative to the course.

Businessmen apparently hold the Advanced Management Program in high esteem because each year, according to the trade journal "Personnel," "vice-presidents, managers, and other executives" scramble for opportunities to attend one of the 13 week courses. Since the program began after the war, more than 1,250 men from over 250 companies have enrolled.

Nor is sending a representative to the Business School course something a firm will do on a whim. It's so expensive, in fact, that most of the A.M.P.'s come from "blue chip" firms which can afford to lose an important executive, pay his salary while he's absent (they are invariably over $10,000), and pay his expenses at the Business School, which amount to between $1,500 and $1,800 for the 13-week period. The tuition fee alone is $800, and the executives also have to pay $15, $225275, and $350 for medical fee, room, and food respectively. Since the business men are accustomed to a reasonably high standard of living, they usually balk at eating college fare steadily and estimate that they spend an extra $250 sampling what Boston has to offer in the line of fine food.

Six Fields

Besides meeting and exchanging information with their colleagues, which is something the A.M.P.'s consider particularly valuable, the executives study in six specialized fields:

1. Administrative practices, which deals with problems of personnel and human relations which companies face.

2. Cost and financial administration, a study of technical accounting and budgetary procedures.

3. Marketing management, a survey of the techniques of quantity production, price changing, and sales stimulation.

4. Production management.

5. Business and the American economy.

6. Problems in labor relations. This has generally been the most popular course among A.M.P.'s.

This program, said an oil company executive last year when he finished his course, "broadens the businessman's outlook, his understanding of business, and above all, it forces a man to think, and think seriously about many phases of business which he does not ordinarly consider."

To Each His Dean

Like any University student, the A.M.P. has a Dean and an assistant Dean to whom he can take problems. Unlike the other students, however, he is provided with stenographic service and a ticket service if he has to travel.