After an 80-hour week of case-study analyses, M.B.A. classes, and early-morning study sessions at the Acton School of Business, selling Junior League cookbooks door-to-door is probably the last thing Nate Little and Joseph Kozusko want to be doing on a sunny Friday morning in Austin, Tex.
“This is the scariest thing I’ve done at Acton, hands down,” says Mr. Little as he summons up the courage to knock on his first door. Mr. Kozusko, who is carrying a Tupperware container of brownie samples, agrees. “The nos are coming so quickly,” he laments as another homemaker politely shoos them away.
The sales challenge is one of the more humbling trademarks of a five-year-old business school that trains M.B.A. students to be entrepreneurs by making them work on assembly lines, sell door-to-door, and read through hundreds of case studies.
“Far too often, students learn to regurgitate what a professor tells them,” says Jeff Sandefer, the third-generation Texas oilman and former University of Texas at Austin entrepreneurship professor who co-founded the school.
At Acton, students complete M.B.A.'s in one year rather than the traditional two. “They develop a real respect for the difficulty of sales,” he says. “A lot of times, M.B.A. students think of themselves as being above the sales force. It’s not easy to be told ‘no’ 99 times and to have to stand up, put your ego aside, and ask again.”
There is no tenure at Acton. Its faculty members, all of whom are entrepreneurs, do not lecture or do research. They earn $5,000 per course, plus a bonus determined entirely by student evaluations. Each year the professor with the lowest grade is given the boot.
Students who complete the degree get a fellowship that refunds their entire $35,000 tuition. If they’re satisfied with their education, they agree to pay 10 percent of their salaries until the fellowship is paid back. If they aren’t happy, they don’t pay.
In 2002, Mr. Sandefer and three other professors left the entrepreneurship program they had developed at the University of Texas to start the Acton School.
For a year, it was housed at St. Edward’s University, in Austin, but its unconventional practices made for uncomfortable bedfellows.
“It was a great experiment and a good opportunity for both parties while it lasted, but it was not a good match,” said Mischelle Diaz, a St. Edwards spokeswoman.
It is now affiliated with Hardin-Simmons University, in Abilene.
“We have not had the culture clashes they had before,” said Michael L. Monhollon, business dean at Hardin-Simmons. “They have a unique program, and we haven’t threatened them by meddling with it.”
Students say they spend 80 to 90 hours a week on the program, which Mr. Sandefer describes as a kind of academic boot camp. “It often takes getting to the point of mental exhaustion for the light bulb to go on,” he says.
After two hours of knocking on doors, Mr. Little finally makes his first sale. He heads back to his car and an afternoon of studying with a little more spring in his step.
http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Volume 54, Issue 16, Page A10
