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Joining the ranks of a growing list of one-year Masters Programs, including the recently announced NYU Tech MBA and the now firmly established Cornell Tech MBA, is Carnegie Mellon’s Master of Science in Product Management (MSPM).
This joint effort between the Tepper School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University‘s School of Computer Science is focused on turning technical specialists, computer scientists and engineers into product managers.
“This really is a response to the marketplace,” says Co-director of the program, Bob Monroe, “where it is increasingly difficult to find good product managers who also have a technical background.”
The MSPM program was created specifically to address this issue through a curriculum that includes foundational business courses like, finance, marketing, strategy – and, maybe most importantly for some, communication and leadership – along with classes with Masters-level computer science and engineering courses.
The idea is to really deepen student’s knowledge of specific business-technology subjects. For example, working with the School of Computer Science, a student may specialize in user experience design, data analytics, deeper marketing aspects or other areas that will be the focus of their career going forward.
So, who is this program for? A technical specialist, who is early in their career and who is ready to take a step toward becoming a “CEO of product.” This role requires not just technical knowledge but the capacity to be an effective manager with the interpersonal and communication skills necessary to lead a very diverse set of professionals.
One really interesting part of the program is that it is a calendar year program (January to December), thereby allowing for an internship over the summer and a final capstone project tied directly to the needs of the program’s corporate partners. While the full list of corporate partners is still emerging, recent companies that have hired Tepper grads or grads from other CMU programs are all the blue chip technology firms you’d expect like Amazon, Apple, Disney, Google, and the list goes on.
And by the way, the MSPM program is half the cost of the regular MBA program and takes half the time. This makes a lot of sense for a lot of people.
If Carnegie Mellon’s MS in Product Management is of interest, now is the time to get moving! The first cohort will begin in January 2018 and applications for international students are due July 1. US applicants have until August 15 to submit their applications.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]