Thanks. Its interesting to hear other perspectives. I'm at University of Chicago. There are pretty much 3 types of classes here, Case-based, Tool-Based, or Lab

Thanks. Its interesting to hear other perspectives. I'm at University of Chicago. There are pretty much 3 types of classes here, Case-based, Tool-Based, or Labs. Very few of the professors use textbooks at all, if they do they are purely for reference, not for primary use. Having owned 2 businesses before school, I think you are right that some lessons can be learned through experience. However, this is an asset during discussion because we have a variety of people with a variety of backgrounds adding their experiential knowledge into the discussions - so the value derived is higher than just experiencing it yourself. For example, I have no experience with retail operations or with industrial manufacturing, but some of the lessons they learned the hard way might be useful to me later on as a software startup guy, and some of the lessons I learned during my companies might be useful to them down the road. The other benefit of University of Chicago is that the MBA program does not have a fixed curriculum, so students craft their own program of study (there are some guidelines), and they can choose to study deep in one area (for example, Econometrics or Analytical Finance) or for those with less business experience to go more broad.