Thunderbird to offer free online business courses says dean Sanjeev Khagram
Sanjeev Khagram, left, with donors Dionne and Francis Najafi
January 30, 2022
This month, Arizona State University’s (ASU) Thunderbird School of Global Management announced that it will offer a free accredited online global management and entrepreneurship certificate. It will consist of five courses, including global leadership, customer experience and global entrepreneurship.
Starting in April 2022, the certificate will be offered to college graduates in India, Brazil, Iran, Kenya, Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt, Senegal, and Vietnam, in their native languages. Within four years, Thunderbird will offer the certificate in forty languages, including English, Hindi Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali and Gujarati. The school’s goal is to reach 100 million learners worldwide by 2030, 70% of them women.
At Thunderbird, “As an immigrant (from Iran) some five decades ago, I learned the value of education…basic management skills and leadership…and also learned that you can work through your cultural and social differences,” said Francis Najafi in a statement. Najafi, a Phoenix real estate, private equity and venture investor, and his wife Dionne donated $25 million for the program, which is named after them: Francis and Dionne Najafi 100 Million Learners Global Initiative.
Additional funding is expected from other donors as well as corporate and government partnerships. The Najafi program will use avatars of faculty, machine learning, artificial intelligence and other advanced technology tools to teach and grade. Students will access the courses via their computers and smartphones and are expected to collaborate with others.
The program will be run by Sanjeev Khagram, Dean of Thunderbird. He has lived and worked in India, Brazil, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Thailand, Germany and the United Kingdom.
The demand for higher education is projected to grow from about 220 million people in 2020 to nearly 500 million in 2035. To meet that demand, the world would have to build eight universities that each serve 40,000 students every week for the next 15 years.
A decade ago, online programs were launched by numerous for-profit and non-profit entities, including Stanford University and University of Manitoba, Canada. They were viewed as a low-cost, efficient way to provide additional higher education capacity. But many of the programs were ended, especially free courses, since the student drop-out rate was over 90%.
Arizona State University is among the more successful survivors. It offers over 300 degrees and certificates online, including through the Thunderbird business school. Online students have the same curriculum and faculty and are awarded the same degrees as ASU’s in-person students. But the annual tuition fees for the online program are about $13,000, half that of the in-person program - and there are no room, boarding and travel costs.
ASU online has over 40,000 undergraduate students and 14,000 graduate students. Amazon, Bank of America and other employers offer subsidized and even free access to ASU’s degrees for their fulltime and parttime employees. Starbucks currently has nearly 11,000 of its employees enrolled in ASU programs.
The ASU online programs provide Khagram with access to a wide and deep pool of technical tools as well as knowledge about courses, curriculum, teaching, grading and student recruiting, which he can apply to the online Najafi initiative.
Learners in the Najafi program will receive a badge for each course they complete and a 15-unit accredited certificate upon successful completion of all five courses. Thunderbird and ASU, and perhaps other universities worldwide, will accept the credits for the courses towards granting an advanced degree.
A learner who completes the Najafi program will have about a semester’s academic credit – half that needed for a one-year Master’s program, if available, and a quarter for a two-year degree. So, effectively, she or he can earn a Master’s degree at a 25% or 50% discount.
As a result, the Najafi program will likely feed ASU with a new supply of students. For instance, even if 0.1% of those taking part in the free program complete the certificate and want to pursue a degree, there could be 100,000 students paying for an online advanced degree – especially at Thunderbird and ASU - if their fees are low enough for students from India and other developing countries.
Thunderbird, based in Phoenix, Arizona, was founded in 1946. Originally knowns as the American Institute for Foreign Trade [AIFT], it was set up in Glendale, Arizona, on the site of a de-activated World War II airbase, Thunderbird Field, where pilots from around the world trained during the war.
From 2012 to 2018, Thunderbird’s Dean Sanjeev Khagram, 54-years-old, was a Professor of Global Political Economy at Occidental College, California. He was previously a Professor and the Founding Director of the Center for International Development at the University of Washington, Seattle. He was a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School, an associate and assistant Professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a visiting Professor at Stanford University’s Institute of International Studies.
Khagram has also taught at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and other universities around the globe. He is the author of several books, including Dams and Development, and research articles. In 1999, Khagram earned a doctorate in political economy; in 1993, a M.A. from the Food Research Institute; and in 1990, a self-designed B.A. with a major in development studies and engineering – all from Stanford University.
Khagram is of Indian heritage and a Hindu. He has two sons. “My American dream began in Jinja, Uganda…(where) my paternal family ran” electronics, real estate, insurance and agribusiness enterprises, he told PBS. “We were expelled by the dictator, Idi Amin in 1972 and lost everything, having to flee to Kenya in 48 hours.” His family was taken to refugee camps in Italy. The next year, arriving in My U.S., the family began living in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, a New York City suburb. “All my friends growing up were African American, and the joke was that I was the true African because I came from Africa.”
Speaking of the Najafi program, Khagram said in a statement that, “As a refugee of Idi Amin’s Uganda, my life was transformed by having access to world-class education, so (the program) is deeply personal for me.”
Subscribe and support Global Indian Times via THIS LINK
