ASU Offers 9-Month Masters In Mgt.

By getting a master’s in just nine months, students obviously are making certain sacrifices. Says Hillman: “You sacrifice the depth of specializations such as finance or marketing. And the other thing is the audience. Part of the learning experience is having a rich set of experience within the other students to apply to the topics explored in class.” The upshot: class discussions are not nearly as helpful as a learning device when few of the students have ever worked full-time.

The shorter program also eliminates the possibility of a summer internship, typically a crucial part of a two-year MBA program because it allows career switchers to try out a new industry and company. Those internships often lead to job offers well before an MBA graduates. Instead, the nine-month program will conclude with a 15-week applied consulting project with a company. “It comes at the very end so they are able to apply everything they learned over the year in a corporate setting,” added Hillman.

The Carey School is trying to position the new degree as a way to help recent college grads who are unemployed to become more marketable to employers. “Finding a job upon college graduation has historically been challenging and is exacerbated by today’s down economy,” said Hillman in a statement. “We created the new MiM program specifically to address the enormous pain point felt by today’s graduating class and current and future job seekers.”

In an interview with Poets&Quants, Hillman said the school expects to enroll 35 to 45 students in the inaugural class this fall. The program will largely be taught by the school’s full-time MBA faculty. If a graduate of the program would later want to get an MBA, as many as 25% of the credits and be used for that purpose later on, said Hillman.

Applications for the inaugural MiM class are currently being accepted for fall 2012. More information is available at wpcarey.asu.edu/mim.

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