Most other graduate schools offer their own, scaled-down versions of executive education, not all of which are as profitable as the HBS, KSG and SPH.

All follow roughly the same pattern, offering Harvard faculty instruction and lots of contact with other professionals in the field. However, HBS's creature comforts are far and away the best. Most other schools send their mid-career students to hotels.

The reasons for growth

Mid-career programs are already growing and new courses are planned in several schools this year. The first reason for this expansion is a simple increase in demand, much of it from overseas.

Rudenstine says he was inspired to call for increases in mid-career programs by a summer visit to Asia.

"There's a real global need. Very few universities have anything like the breadth, depth and span of professional schools that wen do," Rudenstine says. "There's a crying need for it."

Now, "there's hardly a school that doesn't have an international agenda," he says.

And this demand for mid-career education has to be done in short seminars because Harvard seeks to put its stamp on the real powerbrokers in business and government--many of whom simply cannot spare the two or three years to earn a Harvard MBA or Master of Public Policy degree.

Harvard officials say they are happy to accommodate this demand as far as funding and faculty schedules will allow. They say professors love to teach mid-career classes because their research comes to them in the form of students who are also experienced professionals.

"Imagine you're a young faculty member. You walk in to a room and everybody is older and more experienced than you, and your job is to help them learn from one another," says Peter B. Zimmerman, associate dean for executive education at the KSG.

"It's an enormous opportunity for faculty to gain insight into how the world works," Zimmerman said.

And officials say many mid-career students are happy to provide their money and experience in exchange for a chance to interact with each other and to take home a Harvard "degree" of sorts--in reality a certificate of attendance.

"I've served on panels with some very distinguished people," said David A. Shore, assistant dean of continuing professional education at SPH. "And when they read their biographies, it will say, master's degree, Ph.D. and a one-week [program] at Harvard."

Shore and others say an added benefit for Harvard is that the alumni of these programs create a network of connections in the professional world, which feeds back to Harvard in terms of prestige and dollars.

"It's a vehicle to bring back alumni and create opportunities for research, and opportunities to place our students within these organizations," Shore said.