When deciding to pursue any kind of education, be it a master’s degree or a project management graduate certificate, one of the main questions people have has to do not with course content or campus services, but with what happens after graduation. Is a degree in project management worth it?
To answer this question properly, first, we have to determine what is meant by “worth it.” What are you looking for in your education? What are your values? Many people put earning potential before anything else. However, there are other important factors to consider, such as work-life balance, work that provides a sense of fulfilment, opportunities to move up in a company, and opportunities to move vertically to a new sector if desired.
Fortunately, a degree in project management fulfils all these factors.
Earning Potential
Depending on the sector and position, project managers can make an excellent salary. According to Glassdoor, project managers working at Hydro One, Ontario’s electricity service provider, can make over $130,000 per year. Entry positions at companies such as Bombardier start closer to $51,000. This means that graduates can expect to have a high earning potential over the entire duration of their careers.
Work-life balance
Work-life balance is important. You don’t want to spend your evenings and weekends working in an office or obsessing over email before bed. It is important to devote time to friends, family, and your hobbies in order to lead a healthy life. Thankfully, many project management positions involve standard 40-hour work weeks.
Sense of Fulfilment
A sense of fulfilment comes from doing something that is uniquely meaningful to you. This can be the completion of a big project, solving a problem, or even helping someone. Project management allows you to feel fulfilled through all of these things.
Opportunities for Growth
As implied in the earning potential sections of this post, project managers that begin as interns or in entry-level positions have the potential to move up higher in the corporate ranks. The very nature of managing projects means that you will be managing other people, and as you get better at this, you can expect to take on more responsibilities and a higher position.
Shift Sectors
The final factor that makes project management worth it is that it is a job that allows you to easily shift sectors. Every industry needs project managers: tech, human resources, sales, imports and exports, and more. If you get bored with your job, it is not hard to take your skill set to a new industry. You might think that the tech industry and the food industry have nothing in common, but the tenants or project management are the same in both. Both industries need someone who can initiate, plan, execute, monitor and control a project. Did you imagine that running a bake shop could be similar to running an IT company? Of course, there are differences in the details, but the overall processes are often quite similar.
What makes a degree worth it is a very personal matter, but hopefully reviewing some of these factors helped you to determine the applicability of project management to your life!