It’s been more than 50 years since Stanford’s education and business schools first came together to establish a joint master’s degree, one that takes no longer than the usual two-year MBA program but grants both an MA and an MBA. The program – which has students taking a full course load at both the GSB and the GSE, plus a summer internship or other independent study – has evolved over the decades as both fields have transformed. “The story of this program is really one of persistence and change,” said Michael Kirst, a professor emeritus at the GSE and former professor (by courtesy) at the GSB, who oversaw the launch of the program in 1969 and went on to direct it for more than 30 years. “It took a lot of will on the part of the two schools to make it happen in the first place – and to make changes as the field morphed, and as students’ interests evolved. And it’s still flourishing.” Launching the program in 1969 required a collaboration of a sort that’s exceedingly rare to this day, Kirst said. There’s typically not a lot of affinity and interaction between education and business schools,” he said. “Ed schools often have reservations about business and its profit-making motives, and business schools have reservations about the quality of education schools. There haven’t traditionally been very close ties between the two, and generally that’s still the case.”  Kirst has had a long and distinguished career in education policy: Since 1975 he’s served four terms as president of the California Board of Education, making him the longest-serving appointee in the history of that role. He also cofounded Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), a nonpartisan research center housed at Stanford, in 1982. When he was starting his career, Kirst never imagined that he’d find himself at Stanford, launching a graduate program or anything else.