All About Master's In Management

If you’re about to graduate from a college with an undergraduate degree in the humanities or the sciences and are having trouble landing a job, you might very well be an ideal prospect for a master’s in management program. Gone are the days when corporations recruited English and Political Science majors and put them into training programs. Today, companies want to hire students who are job-ready, able to make a contribution from day one. That’s essentially the role of a master’s in management program.

A MiM, as it is commonly called,  is a graduate-level program that provides the business fundamentals that will help you get a job you want. Typically earned in a single year, the degree is designed for individuals who have recently completed their undergraduate studies and want to gain a deeper understanding of management principles without necessarily having significant prior work experience.

For students, a big appeal of MiM programs is in admissions. Even when they have entrance exam requirements, class score averages are much lower than typical MBA programs; for example, the Graduate Management Admission Test average for the most recent MS in Management Science class at Texas-Dallas Jindal is 610. That same school’s MBA class average in 2022 was 689.

MiM admissions teams also look favorably on students with little or no work experience; this, plus the programs’ short duration — most are 9 to 12 months long— also appeals to a sector of the population long targeted by MBA programs (with mixed success): women. Of 21 U.S. programs that have publicly reported their class percentages of women, the average is just under 48%; 11 schools have 50% or more women in their MiMs. Leading all programs is Duke Fuqua’s Master of Management Studies: Duke Kunshan University, with 64% women; small Lehigh University College of Business is close behind at 63%.

MiM program are very popular in Europe where the MiM is the predominant graduate degree in business, and they are becoming more popular in the U.S. where the MBA is the most popular graduate degree. A recent market overview by Poets&Quants found that 28 top U.S. business schools already offer 3s different MiM programs. More and more U.S. schools, meantime, are jumping on the MiM bandwagon. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business is  launching a 10-month master in management program with the first classes scheduled to get underway in fall 2024. It will be  the Booth School’s first new degree program since before World War II. including UC Davis’ Graduate School of Management, Emory University’s Goizueta Business School is also creating a new 10-month MiM program, for which the first class of students also espected to enroll in the fall of 2024. And UC Davis’ Graduate School of Management will become the first University of California school to get into the act, expecting to enroll its first online MiM cohort in April of 2024, while an on-campus version of the program will welcome students in the fall of 2024.

MiM programs typically cover a broad range of topics, including organizational behavior, marketing, finance, strategy, entrepreneurship, and leadership. The programs  aim to equip students with the necessary tools and insights to excel in managerial roles across different industries. It provides a solid foundation in business and management, making it an attractive option for those who may not have a specific career focus yet and want a well-rounded education in management practices.

It’s worth noting that the Master’s in Management is distinct from an MBA (Master of Business Administration), which is typically designed for individuals with several years of work experience and often involves a more in-depth and specialized curriculum.