a program “specially designed to train men to be competent managers of businesses that have much to do with engineering problems.” Harvard also began offering short five-week selections of standard MBA material in the late 1920s. In 1930 Course XV at MIT became an independent department and was named the Department of Business and Engineering Administration. In 1931 an innovative program for executive development was initiated with the backing of several industrialists. This one-year program — offering graduate study in the fundamentals of management and decision-making — was aimed at young managers who were nominated by their employers and was highly competitive. In 1938 the program received full funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and was formally named the MIT Sloan Fellowship Program for Executive Development at MIT. Executive Education in the United States developed critical mass after World War II. The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 — commonly known as the GI Bill of Rights — allowed veterans to take advantage of education benefits. Many studied business in college, a privilege previously only enjoyed by the wealthy. Subsequent executive education programs, including the 13-week Advanced Management Program at Harvard University and the four-week Institute for Management at Northwestern University's School of Commerce (now the Kellogg School of Management), developed in response to the need to rapidly train line executives for general management in the post World War II era. By the late 1970s, nearly 20 business schools in the United States were offering some form of executive education. The science of business also was developing at a rapid pace as faculty, such as Michael Porter (Harvard ) and C. K. Prahalad (University of Michigan), published academic papers that changed the way people thought and acted within companies. Prahalad is most notably remembered for developing the concepts of “core competencies” and “strategic intent”. These and other respected academic business thinkers — Don Hambrick, Ram Charan, David Ulrich, Michael Hammer, Gary Hamel and many others — are the true pioneers of executive education and the ongoing effort to facilitate wealth creation and other new concepts aimed at making stronger businesses while improving the welfare of the world. Throughout the 1970s university-based executive education continued to evolve as an industry. Several on-campus residential facilities were constructed at several universities, demonstrating the value of a standalone facility dedicated to executive education programs. This spurred the development of such facilities at schools nationwide