Project Management Degree
Pursuing a specialized project management degree is a major career commitment. It shows employers that you are devoted to project management as a full time career; it's not just an incidental skill mentioned in the "other skills and knowledge" section of your resume', like typing speed.
People with project management degrees stand out among the many applicants for a project manager job, and they tend to command higher salaries by virtue of their expertise and effectiveness. There are several ways to get a project management degree, and specialties within each educational path.
The standard project management degree is the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Students must document at least 35 hours of formal study and training in the Project Management Body Of Knowledge (PMBOK), a collection of methodologies and best practices maintained by the PMI, and pass a written examination. There are about 360,000 certified PMPs worldwide today. Obtaining PMP certification can be done in several ways.
Many community colleges and universities offer project management degree programs, most of which include PMP certification at their cores. Vocational, or professional development schools are more likely to offer PMP certification as a standalone product, so if you already have a Bachelor's degree you may want to save time and money this way. Correspondence schools offer PMP training and documentation of Professional Development Units (PDUs), a fancy name for "credit hours". The examination is administered locally at various times during the year.
Online project management degree programs are offered by the same institutions that offer classroom training. For someone employed full time, the online courses offer convenience and flexibility. Be sure that any online project manager degree program is certified by the PMI so that the PDUs earned will be recognized by that standards body.
You can obtain an IT project management degree, construction project management degree, or other specialized project manager degree from schools which teach those industry specialties. Degrees in project management come in many specialties by industry and subfunction of project management.
Project management Masters degrees are also available. A Master's degree in project management differentiates you even more from the rest of the job applicants. It can also be the key to a teaching position in a project management degree program.