Thanks to a $25 million gift, the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State … [+]
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Arizona State University unveiled plans on Thursday to educate 100 million students worldwide by 2030.
The initiative will be carried out by ASU’s Thunderbird School of Global Management and will be funded in part by a $25 million donation by Phoenix philanthropists Francis and Dionne Najafi. Founded in 1946 as an independent, private institution, Thunderbird was acquired by Arizona State University in 2014.
The Najafi’s gift will fund an accredited online Global Management and Entrepreneurship Certificate that will help people in developing countries learn some basic business skills. The certificate curriculum will consist of the following five courses that ultimately will be offered in 40 different languages, as part of what’s being called the Francis and Dionne Najafi 100 Million Learners Global Initiative.
- Global Leadership in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
- Customer Experience and Digital Marketing in a Global World
- Global Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Business
- Data Analytics and Digital Transformation in a Global World
- Global Financial Accounting
The cost of the certificate program will be covered by full scholarships, allowing students to be able to complete it without paying tuition. The first courses are scheduled to begin in April.
Students will receive a badge for each course they complete, and upon completion of all five courses, they will be awarded an accredited certificate which they can apply toward requirements in other educational programs at ASU or transfer the credits to other universities.
After the content of the courses is developed, the plan is for them to be translated into the different languages by a Google engine and then taught by instructors proficient in the specific languages.
Leaders of the effort intend for the curriculum to be phased in over three to four years. In the first year, the initiative will be offered to students in Iran, Kenya, Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt, India, Senegal, Brazil and Vietnam in their native languages.
By the second year, the program will be expanded across Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America and will be offered in at least 25 languages.
And by year four, the program will be expanded to Europe and Central Asia, bringing the total number of languages used for instruction to 40. It’s expected that 70% of the participants will be women.
Francis Najafi is a ‘77 alum of Thunderbird, and his wife, Dionne, is an ‘06 alum. An immigrant from Iran, Mr. Najafi founded the Pivotal Group, a real estate and private entrepreneurial investment firm, in 1982. He is also part-owner of the Phoenix Suns.
Quoted in the university’s announcement, he cited the large number of people around the world who have no access to education. “My wife and I think of education as part of your basic human rights. … As an immigrant some five decades ago, I learned the value of education. I learned my basic management skills and leadership here at Thunderbird, where I also learned that you can work through your cultural and social differences. That is so unique to Thunderbird.”
Commenting on the importance of providing access to higher education on a global scale, ASU President Michael Crow said, “One of the reasons Arizona State University is so pleased to have Thunderbird as part of our enterprise is because it is a school that has been focused on sustained prosperity worldwide for decades.” He added that the Najafi commitment would “be a force that brings all of us closer together. We are grateful for their commitment to a borderless expansion of the opportunities that come with higher education.”
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