PHILADELPHIA--Back to school this year has taken new meaning for 18 senior administrators from higher education across the nation. They are not only orchestrating the new academic year from their posts as vice presidents and deans but they are also beginning their doctorates in higher education management at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Executive Doctorate is structured so participants can earn the Penn doctorate in education in two years by coming to Philadelphia for a long weekend once a month for 20 consecutive months. The program begins on Aug. 16 and runs to Aug. 21.

The Penn program is structured to avoid the horror stories of students spending years with minimal direction completing coursework and especially dissertations," program director J. Douglas Toma said. "Our idea is to provide is the time and space - and direct support from faculty - so that people with extraordinarily demands on their time can focus their full attention on their academic work. In essence, we lock them in a very nice conference room for three days each month and keep serving them very good food."

Penn did not look to a traditional doctoral program for a model but to executive MBA programs at leading business school, including Penn's Wharton School of Business. Dissertation work begins on day one and is embedded into coursework and based on data from the home institutions of participants. Furthermore, everyone in the group follows the same schedule to complete a common curriculum over six consecutive semesters.

The Penn Graduate School of Education faculty is a pioneer in approaching practice and research in higher education as a study in the management of complex organizations. The Penn curriculum in higher education is founded on the fact that institutions must actually manage the myriad services that they now provide and that they must be increasingly skilled at reading the market and redefining what they offer and to whom they offer it.

The program received four times the number of applications as there were seats reserved for its inaugural year.