Many business and technology leaders have something in common: While some hold advanced academic degrees and some have only technical know-how, none has a business degree.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, holds advanced degrees in science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne. Steve Jobs, Apple Computer's CEO, is a Reed College dropout. William Gates, Microsoft founder and CEO, is a Harvard dropout. Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Computers, is a University of Texas dropout. Dean Kamen, inventor and CEO of Segway, is a Worcester Polytechnic Institute dropout. Pierre Omidyar, an eBay founder, has a computer science degree from Tufts. Larry Page, co-founder of Google, has computer engineering degrees from the University of Michigan and Stanford University, and has completed work toward a doctorate in computer science. Sergey Brin, the other Google co-founder, has degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park, and Stanford, and is enrolled in a doctoral program in computer science at Stanford.

These people are known for their innovation, success, and leadership in starting and, in many cases, running productive companies.

Now, let's look at the U.S. automotive industry. Rick Wagoner, General Motors CEO, has an MBA from Harvard. Bob Nardelli, CEO of Chrysler, has an MBA from the University of Louisville. And Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford, has a master's degree in science as well as a Sloan Management (MIT) master's degree in management.

All of these business school graduates have their hands out for government assistance, yet their companies' track records over the past three decades offer little justification for such largesse.

Now, how were the founders of the big three automakers trained and educated? Walter Chrysler was a master mechanic in the railroad industry. William Durant, GM's founder, was a high school dropout. Alfred Sloan, the longtime head of GM, was an electrical engineering graduate of MIT. He created the ideas of auto styling, yearly change, and the "ladder of success," a concept that kept GM buyers loyal through movement up the scale, from Chevrolet to Pontiac, to Oldsmobile, to Buick, to Cadillac. Henry Ford started as a watch repairman and then became an apprentice machinist and engineer before founding Ford Motor Co.

The auto company founders, essentially mechanics, more closely resemble the business-technology leaders, with engineering knowledge but no MBAs.

We might well ask what they teach in Harvard's MBA program. They require 11 courses that are dominated by finance and business strategy. The word "manufacture" comes up in only one course, described as "technology and operations management." There is no mention of engineering. It appears the curriculum is seriously off-course.

The problem isn't only Harvard's. MBA programs tend to look at manufacturing through an opaque lens filtered by a dollar bill. It is not a question of getting back to basics so much as a need for a perspective that highlights quality, imagination, and innovation in the specific processes of making things.