Masters in Management

If you are wondering about the value of a MBA given the fact that there are thousands of newly minted graduates flooding the job market each year, you are not alone and you are also not without options for a graduate degree with a leadership career track. The Masters in Management has been developed in recent years as an alternative for those who are interested in a credible degree for senior administrative positions. Many schools have developed a series of "majors" or areas of concentration for the degree that allow the student to begin shaping a career track before completing school.

Among the areas of focus at one online university alone are Masters in Management programs in Sustainable Management, Healthcare Management, Global Management, Technology Management, Human Resources Management and Project Management. This assortment of degrees suggests curricula that have tremendous variety: global issues would encompass geopolitics and finance, project management would require the study of data management, healthcare oversight demands training in health delivery systems, and human resources is a field that incorporates psychology and other social science skills. This degree can send a student down an extended range of career paths, with training that is far more specific than that found in a business graduate program.

Common to all Management Master's Degree programs however are courses in operational development, change management, and the most recent methods for efficient personnel use and team building. No management program is complete without some study of basic accounting and finance along with knowledge of the software systems used for budget control and customer relations management. Mastering administrative skills today demands understanding of all the contemporary business tools, but not necessarily the skill level to use those tools extensively or on a daily basis. It's difficult to assign a salary range to a degree with so many career options, but all of them lead to management level pay scales. The median salary for a Director of Human Resources is about $81,000 according to Payscale.com. Project managers in construction earn an average of $63,000; in the IT field they earn $83,000.