"Motorola. Sun Microsystems. Charles Schwab. Toyota. These global business leaders have bred excellence through innovative executive and management development organizations that go well beyond traditional job training. Known as corporate universities, these entities are essentially strategic partners of their sponsoring companies. Often working in conjunction with traditional educational institutions, they boast cream-of-the-crop faculty from the academic and business communities.

Once the province of only the largest corporations, corporate universities are fast becoming the...