ALMOST 2000 graduating Business School students won't go to Commencement this year. While the Masters of Business Administration (MBA) graduates will be there waving their dollar bills and being booed by the crowd, the 1800 corporate professionals who pass through the B-School's executive education programs every year will have already gone back to the business world.

The B-School hosts 13 programs each year for business people. The largest and most prominent of these, the Advanced Management Program (AMP), brings in 480 senior level corporate executives every year from all over the world.

The program, which will graduate its 94th class this December, was born in 1943 as the War Production Training Course to teach business managers how to cope with meeting World War II production demands, according to Jay W. Lorsch, the program's faculty chairman. Since 1943 it has trained 11,000 executives in general management, financial and strategic planning skills.

When a corporation sends one of its top executives to the 13-week program, it continues to pay his salary--as well as the $19,500 AMP bill. Though Kirsten Professor of Human Relations Lorsch acknowledges that the fee is steep for three months' room, board and tuition, he says it is comparable with similar executive programs offered by other universities. "One way to think of the fee is as a donation."

The Advance Management Program uses case studies, not lectures, to bring real world business problems into the classroom. Almost all the AMP students have been in the business world for at least 20 years, and "if you try to lecture to these people, you do them a disservice," says Ralph James, the program's administrative chairman.

Corporate officials, like Anthony I. Marchio, General Motors administrator for executive compensation, say the program is worth the price. "We feel the AMP is an investment in our people and it will eventually come back to the company," says Marchio.

GM now has four employees enrolled in the program and has been sending executives to it for more than 20 years. Marchio says the automating grant likes the Harvard program because of its comprehensive approach and its state of the art content. The program covers two areas in particular, computers and strategic business planning, that GM thinks will help its executives "anticipate and react to change" in the future, Marchio adds.

AS DOES THE MBA program, the AMP uses case studies to bring real world business problems into the classroom for discussion. In the first place, "the case study is one of the basic tenets of the Harvard Business School. It's also one of the best teaching methods," says Ralph James. AMP administrative chairman. But secondly, relying strictly on lectures wouldn't work because almost every. AMP participant has been in the business world for at least 20 years. "If you try to lecture to these people you do them a disservice. Each AMP class has 1600 years of business experience," James explains.

One case in the business ethics portion of the AMP curriculam involved the social responsibility of business. The case, which has not yet been covered this session, raised such questions as, during what kinds of IA programs should business advertise. Should businesses buy stock of South African companies that support the apartheid regime.

The eight full-time AMP professors work more like orchestra conductors than speaker explains, James: "The professor is not so much there to teach, but to orchestrate discussion." Both AMP classrooms are arranged in a horseshoe shape and participants sit on different levels, so that; student can see and talk with all the classmates easily.

One AMP professor who received top ratings from past and present students interviewed. Samuel I. Haves III, Schitt Professor of Investment Banking says he usually begins a class by posing a question to a student rather than lecturing. "I will call on a person for their analysis of the case's situation, but we don't try to embarass people," says Hayes. But, Hayes explains that the AMP professor can't just sit back and let the class run its course. "I have to know everything that might possibly come up.

THE AMP WORKLOAD heavy three and a half hours of class a day and discussion sessions six times a week. Still one graduate of last prime program, Burl Osborne, senior vice president of The Dallas Morning News, says his AMP experience was relaxing.

"It was a time to get off the treadmill for a while and reflect," said Osborne. Besides being a refuge from the survival-of-the-fittest business world and an educational experience. Osborne says the AMP was "extremely broadening" because he got to meet people from all over the world "Something will pass as the mail once or twice a week from people I met at Harvard," says Osborne.

Osborne remembers another antidote devised by some of his classmates to relieve tension--an underground newspaper dubbed AMPoon that made satirical jabs at faculty members. Osborne, who is also editor of the Dallas daily, say the the spoof paper "took great liberties" with Hayes in particular "because he was so good."

Hayes found out, but he says he wasn't offended in fact, he says he learned something from the paper, "Sometimes you learn things that bother people when they spool won in a way that tells you something," he says.