Next semester, some students at Southern California's Pepperdine University might be taking classes next to their moms.

Part of a business-school trend of helping people who aren't working get back into the business world, Pepperdine's program - and similar programs at schools like Wharton - is the latest thing in continuing education.

In January, Pepperdine will formally introduce its Business Education Program for Working Mothers, aimed at helping women re-enter the workforce. Similar programs have popped up at other business schools around the country.

"We will teach them all business fundamentals but also take into account their specific career needs," said Linda Livingstone, dean of Pepperdine's business school.

"They will have access to the university's career-services center, so we can tailor the program to meet their specific needs," she added.

Livingstone's inspiration to start the program stemmed from research at Pepperdine showing that female enrollment in MBA programs nationwide has been historically low.

And Livingstone wanted to find out why.

The reasons weren't very surprising, she said. Many women were leaving the workforce to have children and then found it difficult to return to work afterward. The jobs they might go back to required more complicated skills, and new mothers were left behind.

Pepperdine's new program - which will hold twice-weekly classes of 20 students each - hopes to solve that problem.

But Pepperdine isn't the only university that recognizes the difficulties new mothers face in the corporate world today.

Stanford University's program - called Power and Leadership in a Gendered World -- is meant to teach women to be better business leaders.

"It's a well-established fact that women don't use their networks as well as men do," said Erica Richter, a director of Lifelong Learning at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

And that's what this program hopes to mend by allowing women, as a part of the program, to practice their networking skills in large groups. Richter calls it "structured networking."

Although Stanford's program isn't specifically catered to moms returning to the workforce, such women do form part of the program's target population, Richter added.

While Wharton does not have any courses like this geared specifically for women, it offers other programs to help those already working gain an edge.

Wharton's Programs for Working Professionals seeks to help dissatisfied professionals get their careers back on track. Students are offered six courses in subjects like finance, accounting and marketing; after completion, they receive a certificate from the school. The program costs $2,623 for a certificate, and requires two to three semesters of study.

"For example, we offer a certificate of entrepreneurship, to help someone who has started a business but has sort of given up along the way," said Michael McTigue, a spokesman for the program.

But it also caters to the needs of those who have expertise in one area but want to develop skills in another.

"A typical engineer doesn't have time to take many finance courses," said Glenn Gardener, a project manager at General Electric and graduate of the program. "But many projects in the real world have a huge financial component."