Dr Garth Saloner, dean of the globally renowned Stanford Graduate School of Business (Stanford GSB, estb. 1925) is one of the rare academics who has stepped out of his ivory tower to spend time with start-up ventures and enterprises.

Newspeg. Saloner was in India in early November to launch the online Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate Programme. During his four-day sojourn in the country, he visited Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi. Stanford University’s latest online programme priced at $995 (Rs.54,630) is focused on “the student and her aspirations”.

Direct talk. “People who sign up for this programme are looking to accelerate… to change the way they look at entrepreneurship,” says Saloner, who also launched the part-time Stanford Ignite Bangalore Programme in Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the occasion.

According to Saloner, India’s entrepreneurial energy is remarkable and its pace of innovations exciting. “Bangalore looks like a young Silicon Valley. We want to be there for two reasons. We want to share the type of education our students receive, and share opportunities with the city’s fantastic young entrepreneurs. Secondly, we want to learn. Entrepreneurship is location and culture-specific. Therefore we want to teach our students not just about entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley but entrepreneurship in Bangalore and in other innovation hubs around the world,” he says.

History. A commerce graduate of the University of Witwatersand, Johannesburg, South Africa-born Saloner pressed on to Stanford which awarded him a Masters in statistics and economics and a Ph D in economics, business and public policy. Beginning his career in 1982 as an assistant professor, he rose to the position of tenured professor in the economics department of MIT’s Sloan School of Management and also lectured at Harvard. In 1990, he moved west and signed up with Stanford GSB, and was a key architect of the school’s innovative new curriculum introduced in 2007.

Crystal-ball gazing. Saloner believes the future of education and global progress is dependent upon including more people in higher education, which is being transformed by MOOCs (massive online open courses). Jumping on this bandwagon, Stanford University has participated in Coursera and offers several of its own online courses as well.

However, the don doesn’t believe online education is a substitute for the immersive experience that a great university can offer. “But for colleges and universities which can’t attract the world’s top 10-20 teachers and provide excellent teaching and content, there’s a disruptive period ahead. Teachers will have to do something different in classrooms to supplement the wealth of content available online,” warns Saloner.

Teachers, please note!

Meeta Sengupta (Delhi)