ASU Offers 9-Month Masters In Mgt.

W.P. Carey School of Business

Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business yesterday (Jan. 26) launched a nine-month Master’s in Management (MiM) program.  The program, which costs $36,844 for non-residents and $22,750 for state residents, will accept its first class in the fall of 2012.

Though highly popular in Europe, accelerated master’s degree are a relative novelty in the U.S. Only a handful of U.S. schools have offered such programs. The University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, for example, has a one-year Master of Science in Financial Services or Marketing and Management. That program costs $43,420 for non-residents and $38,420 for Virginia residents.

But the lower cost and quicker time out are often considered attractive features compared to two-year MBA programs. Most of these degrees are designed for liberal arts and engineering types who attend straight from undergraduate school with little or no work experience.

“What we’re hearing from employers is that they love liberal arts as a foundation, but they like liberal arts graduates to have a little bit of business but not too much so they can get them accustomed to their own business models,” said Amy Hillman, executive dean of the Carey School. “The curriculum has been created for students who don’t have work experience yet.”

Master’s in Management programs showed a 69% increase in applications last year, according to a recent Graduate Admissions Council (GMAC) Application Trends Survey. But most of the demand has been overseas. Of the 65 MIM programs ranked by The Financial Times last year, for example, not one was in the U.S. Canada had the only FT-ranked program in North America at HEC Montreal. Typically, graduates of these programs earn far less than MBA grads (see sample of European schools below). At ESADE in Spain, for example, an MBA grad earned $124,572 three years after graduation last year but an MIM grad earned only $59,641, according to pay data gathered by The Financial Times from the alumni of these programs.

The differences in payare largely due to less work experience and age.