Teach For India and St. Xavier’s College Launch MA in Transformational Leadership

Teach For India, a non-profit championing educational equity, and the prestigious St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, have launched a Master’s Degree in Transformational Leadership. This unique, two-year postgraduate program (four semesters) will allow selected Teach For India Fellows to earn this degree while continuing their full-time, paid teaching work in under-resourced schools. It's a one-of-a-kind opportunity to change the lives of students from low-income backgrounds while accelerating their own growth as leaders and finding their long-term purpose.

The Master's Degree in Transformational Leadership is an immersive, rigorous leadership development program. It will deep-dive into various aspects that are an integral part of classroom education today, ranging from classroom culture to data-driven instruction and assessments, education leadership, stakeholder engagement, and community projects. It will also include immersive sessions on arts & sports education, policy and the public sector, education technology, and school leadership (among many others).

Commenting on the announcement, Shaheen Mistri, Founder and CEO, Teach For India said - “We are very excited to launch this first-ever Master’s Degree program in partnership with St. Xavier’s College. This program will develop our selected Teach For India Fellows into leaders who will not only understand educational inequity in its deepest context but will also possess the knowledge and leadership skills to transform classrooms. We will be running this program as a pilot to begin with, so that we can fine-tune it to serve our Fellows purpose better. We hope that this program enables collective action and empowers the Fellows to build innovative change projects and choose a career path with a deep commitment to educational equity”.

As per Rajendra Shinde, Former Principal, St. Xavier’s College, “Our association with Teach For India is a deeply personal one. Not only is Shaheen an alum of our institution, but I have also had the privilege of seeing my own daughter’s transformative journey as a Teach For India Fellow. It gives me immense hope to know that we are building leaders who have deep, profound understanding of what an excellent education looks like. St. Xavier’s has always been a pioneer, known by our commitment to Trust, Quality, and Care - and we feel proud to be the first to institute a Master’s in Transformational Leadership, in partnership with Teach For India.”

The degree will be awarded by St. Xavier’s College, an autonomous institution affiliated with the University of Mumbai, and is fully UGC-recognised. This means it can be used for higher education (like a PhD), jobs that require a postgraduate degree, or national-level exams like the UGC-NET both in India and abroad.

The cost is ₹15,000 per year, plus a small one-time registration fee for non-Mumbai University graduates. Scholarships are available for those who require financial assistance.