A project man­ag­er plays a vital role in each pro­jec­t’s suc­cess. If you are seri­ous­ly inter­est­ed in a project man­age­ment career, it is imper­a­tive that you find the answers to these impor­tant questions -

• Is a project man­age­ment degree worth it?
• Why get a project man­age­ment degree?

The short answer to the ques­tion — Is a degree in project man­age­ment worth it? – is yes.

A project manager’s pro­fes­sion­al respon­si­bil­i­ties are required from the plan­ning stages through the project’s com­ple­tion. This is the fun­da­men­tal rea­son why project man­agers’ skills are always in high demand, across indus­try sectors.

If you are seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing a project man­age­ment career, check out the guide below that offers insights and advice regard­ing the coun­try’s many edu­ca­tion­al offerings.

Accreditation for Project Management Programs

Accred­i­ta­tion in the Unit­ed States hap­pens at two basic lev­els – region­al accred­i­ta­tion and spe­cial­ized accreditation.

Region­al accred­i­ta­tion hap­pens at the school or insti­tu­tion lev­el. Each insti­tu­tion of high­er edu­ca­tion is award­ed region­al accred­i­ta­tion when the school com­plies with edu­ca­tion­al stan­dards as cre­at­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s six region­al agen­cies.

• The New Eng­land Com­mis­sion on High­er Edu­ca­tion (NECHE)
• The South­ern Asso­ci­a­tion of Col­leges & Schools Com­mis­sion of Col­leges (SACSCOC)
• The WASC Senior Col­lege & Uni­ver­si­ty Com­mis­sion (WSCUC)
• The Mid­dle States Com­mis­sion of High­er Edu­ca­tion (MSCHE)
• The North­west Com­mis­sion on Col­leges & Uni­ver­si­ties (NWCCU)
• The High­er Learn­ing Com­mis­sion (HLC)

Specialized Accreditation

As you con­tin­ue your research into the many avail­able aspects of a project man­age­ment career, it is impor­tant to under­stand that the top project man­age­ment schools will also receive spe­cial­ized accred­i­ta­tion. Spe­cial­ized accred­i­ta­tion is man­aged by sanc­tioned agen­cies with­in each industry.

More specif­i­cal­ly, spe­cial­ized accred­i­ta­tion is a for­mal­ized qual­i­ty con­trol method­ol­o­gy that eval­u­ates spe­cif­ic pro­grams or depart­ments with­in a uni­ver­si­ty or col­lege. How­ev­er, spe­cial­ized accred­i­ta­tion dif­fers from region­al accred­i­ta­tion because the process is vol­un­tary. The best project man­age­ment degree pro­grams will like­ly be accred­it­ed by one of these accred­i­ta­tion agencies -

The Glob­al Accred­i­ta­tion Cen­ter (GAC) for Project Man­age­ment Edu­ca­tion Programs

The GAC is an inde­pen­dent accred­i­ta­tion agency that sets forth the poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for aca­d­e­m­ic degrees in project man­age­ment at the bac­calau­re­ate, doc­tor­ate, and post-mas­ter’s lev­els. The GAC offers PMI accred­i­ta­tion as it seeks to advance project man­age­ment edu­ca­tion excel­lence across the globe.

The Project Man­age­ment Insti­tute (PMI)

The Project Man­age­ment Insti­tute offers PMI accred­i­ta­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion options for project man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als. The Project Man­age­ment Insti­tute cel­e­brat­ed its 50^th anniver­sary in 2019, hon­or­ing the insti­tute’s work through­out the globe in almost every country.

Type of Project Management Degrees

Pro­fes­sion­al project man­agers help busi­ness­es com­plete com­pli­cat­ed projects. Exam­ples of these types of project man­agers projects include –

• Launch­ing a new prod­uct from devel­op­ment to market.
• Imple­ment­ing a new IT sys­tem to improve com­pa­ny per­for­mance, to name a few.

While there are dif­fer­ent kinds of project man­age­ment pro­grams avail­able that train stu­dents to become dif­fer­ent kinds of project man­agers, most project man­age­ment bach­e­lor degree pro­grams pre­pare stu­dents for project man­age­ment spe­cial­iza­tions by offer­ing core course­work in –

• Plan­ning.
• Orga­niz­ing.
• Imple­ment­ing and execution.
• Mon­i­tor­ing, to name a few stages of project management.

A bach­e­lor degree in project man­age­ment will also pre­pare stu­dents to become strong lead­ers with strong and effec­tive inter­per­son­al and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills as they learn to lead teams and work with clients to ensure projects are fin­ished in accor­dance with a busi­ness’ goals and with­in budget.

Earn­ing a bach­e­lor degree in project man­age­ment online is a great path to help those inter­est­ed in a career in project man­age­ment to com­pete for the high-demand jobs avail­able in the industry.

Stu­dents pur­su­ing a bach­e­lor’s in project man­age­ment degree will find there are many project man­age­ment bach­e­lor degree online options from which to choose. Enrolling in a bach­e­lor degree in project man­age­ment online pro­gram is a great way to help work­ing learn­ers bal­ance their pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al life com­mit­ments. In addi­tion, stu­dents can earn a bach­e­lor degree in project man­age­ment online pro­gram from one of the top uni­ver­si­ties in the nation with­out the need to relocate!

Most project man­age­ment bach­e­lor degree pro­grams require the com­ple­tion of 120 semes­ter cred­its, of which about 60 semes­ter cred­its must be pulled from the spe­cial­iza­tion in project man­age­ment curriculum.

Bachelor’s pro­grams in project man­age­ment build the knowl­edge and skills nec­es­sary for project man­age­ment careers. Learn­ers study foun­da­tion­al busi­ness and project man­age­ment con­cepts. They also typ­i­cal­ly strength­en their train­ing by com­plet­ing an intern­ship or a cap­stone project.

A bach­e­lor’s in project man­age­ment will pre­pare to help you devel­op the required man­age­ment skills used by project man­agers, which also includes the use of indus­try soft­ware. Includ­ed in most bach­e­lor degree in project man­age­ment online pro­grams are these class­es, core cur­ricu­lum for all types of project managers –

• Lead­er­ship.
• Risk Man­age­ment.
• Tech­ni­cal Communication.
• Glob­al Aspects of Project Management.

In addi­tion, many project man­age­ment bach­e­lor degree online pro­grams offer a vari­ety of type of project man­age­ment concentrations -

• Health­care.
• Con­struc­tion.
• IT.
• Risk Man­age­ment.
• Contracts/Procurements, among others.

Project Management Certifications

Stu­dents who have a seri­ous inter­est in a pro­fes­sion­al career in project man­age­ment should also rec­og­nize the val­ue and ben­e­fits of the many cer­ti­fi­ca­tions and cre­den­tials avail­able to fine-tune one’s project man­age­ment skills. It pays div­i­dends to review the avail­able project man­age­ment pro­grams as one research­es the best project man­age­ment pro­grams online. As you con­sid­er the project man­age­ment cer­ti­fi­ca­tions that may be of inter­est – be cer­tain to answer these questions –

• What is a project man­ag­er cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and how will it help one’s career move forward?
• Why get a project man­age­ment cer­ti­fi­ca­tion if I already have earned a degree from one of the best project man­age­ment cer­ti­fi­ca­tions online?
• What is the best project man­age­ment train­ing pro­gram available?
• What does the Project Man­age­ment Pro­fes­sion­al — PMP cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cost, and is the PMP exam hard to pass?
• What is the CAPM certification?
• What is project man­ag­er cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for those work­ing in health care?
• Is the PMP exam hard, and is it hard­er than CAPM certification?
• How long is the PMP exam, and how many PMP exam ques­tions are on the test?

The Project Man­age­ment Institute

Estab­lished in the late 1960s in Penn­syl­va­nia, the Project Man­age­ment Insti­tute offers a vari­ety of project man­age­ment cre­den­tials. These include –

• The PMP – the Project Man­age­ment Pro­fes­sion – is one of the most pop­u­lar cre­den­tials in the realm of project man­age­ment. There are 180 PMP exam ques­tions on the lat­est ver­sion of the PMP exam, which is few­er PMP exam ques­tions than the pre­vi­ous PMP test (which had 200 PMP exam ques­tions). Stu­dents who wish to take this exam will find the PMP cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cost to be $405 (US) for PMI mem­bers and the PMP cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cost to be $555 (US) for nonmembers.
• The CAPM Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion – the Cer­ti­fied Asso­ciate in Project Man­age­ment – this CAPM cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from PMI is sim­i­lar to the PMP cre­den­tial but does not require pro­fes­sion­al experience.

In addi­tion, the PMI offers these best project man­age­ment train­ing and cre­den­tial options –

• The Cer­ti­fied Sched­ul­ing Professional
• The Cer­ti­fied Risk Man­age­ment Professional
• The Pro­fes­sion­al in Busi­ness Analysis
• The Agile Cer­ti­fied Practitioner

Inter­na­tion­al Project Man­age­ment Association

Estab­lished and head­quar­tered in Switzer­land, the Inter­na­tion­al Project Man­age­ment Asso­ci­a­tion (IPMA) offers var­i­ous project man­age­ment cre­den­tials to pro­fes­sion­als through­out the globe. The IPMA offers cer­ti­fi­ca­tions in project man­age­ment at four levels –

• The IPMA – A is the pro­gram man­ag­er cer­ti­fi­ca­tion that demon­strates the cre­den­tialled professional’s abil­i­ty to man­age mul­ti­ple projects.
• The IPMA – B – is an inter­na­tion­al cre­den­tial that demon­strates a project manager’s senior lev­el com­pe­ten­cies, which requires the effec­tive appli­ca­tion of the prin­ci­ples of project management.
• The IMPA – C – is designed for project man­agers who have shown com­pe­tence in man­ag­ing com­plex projects for at least three years.
• The IMPA – D – is an asso­ciate cre­den­tial that is sim­i­lar to the Project Man­age­ment Institute’s CAPM credential.

The Glob­al Asso­ci­a­tion for Qual­i­ty Management

The Glob­al Asso­ci­a­tion for Qual­i­ty Man­age­ment offers a vari­ety of cre­den­tials that include the APM – the Asso­ciate of Project Man­age­ment, The PPM- the Pro­fes­sion­al in Project Man­age­ment, and the CPD – the Cer­ti­fied Project Direc­tor.

Careers in Project Management

For those PM stu­dents who cur­rent­ly hold a bac­calau­re­ate degree in project man­age­ment, it is impor­tant to research the many dif­fer­ent jobs and respon­si­bil­i­ties that are avail­able to these pro­fes­sion­als. To help, con­sid­er find­ing the answers to these or sim­i­lar questions –

• What does a project man­ag­er do if employed in the field of healthcare?
• What jobs can you get with a project man­age­ment certificate?
• What is a project man­ag­er, and what is a project coor­di­na­tor? How do they differ?
• What does a project man­ag­er do if employed in the soft­ware or infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy field?
• Where can you find a qual­i­fied project manager’s job description?
• What jobs can I get with a project man­age­ment certification?
• What does a project man­ag­er do if employed in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal industry?

The job descrip­tion for a project man­ag­er will request that job can­di­dates pos­sess these pro­fes­sion­al qualities-

• Atten­tion to detail.
• High­ly organized.
• Pro­fes­sion­al follow-through.
• Mul­ti-task­ing abilities.
• Effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills.
• Lead­er­ship and team building.

Learn­ing what is a project man­ag­er begins with under­stand­ing that there are many viable paths to a suc­cess­ful project man­age­ment career across indus­tries. Let’s review some of the indus­tries and jobs for project man­age­ment cer­ti­fi­ca­tion holders –

• The job descrip­tion for a project man­ag­er in the con­struc­tion indus­try would include man­ag­ing projects that improve an aging infra­struc­ture or the build­ing of a shop­ping mall.
• A project manager’s job descrip­tion in the field of ener­gy would include work­ing on improv­ing or devel­op­ing new ener­gy systems.
• The job descrip­tion for a project man­ag­er in the engi­neer­ing field would include design­ing new prod­ucts or improv­ing the cur­rent man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es of cur­rent products.
• A project manager’s job descrip­tion in the field of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals man­ag­er new ideas from incep­tion through market/sale.

What can you do with a bach­e­lor of sci­ence and work expe­ri­ence; prob­lem-solv­ing, time man­age­ment and orga­ni­za­tion­al skills; crit­i­cal think­ing, project plan­ning and lead­er­ship skills? You can take on a project man­age­ment role like an oper­a­tions man­ag­er, human resources man­ag­er, IT project man­ag­er, or con­struc­tion project manager.

Project man­age­ment posi­tions job titles, and career paths increase fur­ther with a master’s degree. The skill sets of effec­tive project man­age­ment mean career options galore.

What is a Project Manager vs Project Coordinator?

It is impor­tant to under­stand when com­par­ing project coor­di­na­tor vs project man­ag­er jobs that a pro­jec­tor coor­di­na­tor oper­ates as a sup­port­ive, asso­ciate role in project man­age­ment. So, let’s review what is a project coordinator?

A project coor­di­na­tor is con­sid­ered more of an entry-lev­el posi­tion than that of a project man­ag­er. When defin­ing the roles of a project man­ag­er vs project coor­di­na­tor, it is crit­i­cal to under­stand that project coor­di­na­tors assist project man­agers and, in doing so, gain hands-on, real world project man­age­ment expe­ri­ence. How­ev­er, choos­ing to start a project man­age­ment career may be ben­e­fi­cial to those pro­fes­sion­als who apply for senior roles lat­er in their careers.

Once you have earned a bac­calau­re­ate degree in project man­age­ment, many project man­age­r­i­al pro­fes­sion­als choose to fur­ther their edu­ca­tion and pro­fes­sion­al skills by com­plet­ing one of the many online or on-cam­pus project man­age­ment cer­ti­fi­ca­tion or cer­tifi­cate pro­grams. Project man­agers often choose to spe­cial­ize in one of the project man­age­ment fields like – New Prod­uct Devel­op­ment, Con­struc­tion, Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, and Envi­ron­men­tal Research, among others.

Available Jobs with Project Management Certification

Accord­ing to a PMI recent sur­vey (2/2020), here are the top Avail­able Jobs with Project Man­age­ment Certification –

• Engi­neer­ing Project Man­age­ment Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Jobs – pro­fes­sion­al engi­neer­ing project man­agers that work in the engi­neer­ing field are tasked with the respon­si­bil­i­ty of com­plet­ing a project from incep­tion to close, with­in a spec­i­fied bud­get and defined timeline.
• Aero­space Project Man­age­ment Cer­tifi­cate Jobs – aero­space project man­agers are respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing risk and qual­i­ty while ensur­ing an air­craft is fin­ished on time and with­in bud­get. Aero­space project man­agers work with the most sophis­ti­cat­ed tech­nol­o­gy across the globe.
• Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Cer­tifi­cate in Project Man­age­ment Jobs – phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal project man­agers work along­side researchers, doc­tors, and pro­fes­sion­al engi­neers to make cer­tain that a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies research & devel­op­ment projects remain with­in bud­get and on time.
• Con­sult­ing Project Man­age­ment Jobs – those who work as con­sult­ing project man­agers work on a case-by-case basis across indus­tries with an object to pro­vide exper­tise and knowl­edge to increase the suc­cess of projects man­aged by var­i­ous clients.

Team Roles in Project Management

Each work team will define the roles of the team mem­bers at the start of each project. As such, teach roles may vary based on the exact project and scope of the occu­pa­tion. The fol­low­ing is an abridged list of a few of the poten­tial roles project man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als may play with­in a project team –

• Tech­ni­cal Project Managers.
• Busi­ness Analyst.
• Asso­ciate Project Managers.
• Team Leads.
• Project Exec­u­tives.
• Soft­ware Devel­op­ers, to name a few.

Each of the above-defined team project roles will con­tribute to the suc­cess of the project, but each posi­tion may require spe­cif­ic skills.

Project Management Salary

If you, as a poten­tial project man­ag­er, have come this far in your research regard­ing project man­age­ment pro­grams, it is also impor­tant to understand –

• How much does a project coor­di­na­tor make when com­pared to a project specialist?
• What will be a project man­ag­er start­ing salary?
• How much does a project coor­di­na­tor make per year?
• How does a senior project man­ag­er salary dif­fer from that of a project man­ag­er start­ing salary?
• How does the aver­age start­ing salary project man­ag­er com­pare to a project coordinator?

Accord­ing to the pro­fes­sion­al sta­tis­ti­cians at the Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics, the project man­age­ment salary for 2019 for project man­age­ment spe­cial­ists was $73,570, which trans­lates to $35.37 per hour. In fact, in May 2019, there were more than 1.2 mil­lion pro­fes­sion­als work­ing as project man­age­ment or busi­ness oper­a­tions specialists.

When ana­lyz­ing the income trends and aspects of project man­age­ment, it is impor­tant to review the rel­e­vant per­centile data regard­ing the aver­age start­ing salary project man­ag­er and specialists –

The top-pay­ing states for project man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als are as follows –

The states with the high­est employ­ment for project man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als are as follows –

The top-pay­ing met­ro­pol­i­tan areas for project man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als are as follows –

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan areas that have the high­est employ­ment lev­el for project man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als are as follows –

The top-pay­ing indus­tries for project man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als are as follows –

The top-pay­ing non-metro areas for project man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als is as follows –

The indus­tries that have the high­est lev­el of employ­ment for project man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als is as follows –

Professional Organizations

Every indus­try sets forth over­sight orga­ni­za­tions that help to sup­port the pro­fes­sion­als work­ing in that indus­try and the indus­try as a whole.

Pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tions act as indus­try advo­ca­tors, vying to bet­ter the indus­try by offer­ing a vari­ety of help­ful ben­e­fits that include -

• Edu­ca­tion for licens­ing and con­tin­u­ing education.
• Ongo­ing Men­tor­ships for new mem­bers and recent grad­u­ates of project man­age­ment programs.
• Domes­tic & Inter­na­tion­al events and net­work­ing opportunities.
• Job boards, among oth­er benefits.

In the realm of project man­age­ment, there are three orga­ni­za­tions that help to define the role of project man­agers as professionals –

The Project Man­age­ment Institute

Found­ed in 1968, The Project Man­age­ment Insti­tute (PMI) offers the project man­age­ment Indus­try com­plete ser­vices that help devel­op the edu­ca­tion, research, and stan­dards for the indus­try. With more than 550,000 mem­bers, PMI offers a num­ber of cre­den­tials and is con­sid­ered the de fac­to cri­te­ria for certification.

The Inter­na­tion­al Project Man­age­ment Association

Estab­lished in Switzer­land in the ear­ly 1970s, the IPMA sets the world­wide stan­dards for project man­age­ment orga­ni­za­tions glob­al­ly. Each mem­ber coun­try has an IPMA mem­ber orga­ni­za­tion that offers train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties to its members.

The Asso­ci­a­tion for Project Management

The Asso­ci­a­tion for Project Man­age­ment (APM) is a pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tion tasked with pro­mot­ing the pro­fes­sion of project man­age­ment. Found­ed in 1972 in the Unit­ed King­dom, APM was roy­al­ly char­tered in 2017. The APM boasts a mem­ber­ship of more than 21,000 pro­fes­sion­als and more than 500 cor­po­rate memberships.

Relat­ed Rankings:

25 Best Online Bach­e­lor’s in Project Management

15 Best Bach­e­lor’s in Project Management

10 Fastest Online Bach­e­lor’s in Project Management

10 Online Cer­tifi­cates in Project Management

15 Best Online Train­ing and Devel­op­ment Programs

15 Best Engi­neer­ing Man­age­ment Bach­e­lor Degree Online