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Does a Masters Degree Make a Difference?

By Steve Johnson

According to our survey, it does.

In the 2005 Annual Product Management Salary Survey, we compared product management experience against college versus advanced degrees. In each experience group, the higher degree results in a higher salary.

Experience







Bachelors
Degree






Masters
Degree

00--00







$ 71,000






$ 84,250

01--02







 59,200






 82,714

03--05







 72,083






 84,882

06--10







 82,486






 94,429

11--15







 95,417






 99,308

15+







 99,933






 108,625

I remember my father complaining about people with MBAs years ago. He felt that they treated people and projects like numbers on a spreadsheet. And I think we've all seen examples that prove the fiction of "a good manager can manage anything." However, MBA programs teach how to run the business aspects of a product, something technical people tend to avoid.

Product managers garner credibility from a deep understanding of the product combined with broad customer experience. Nonetheless, adding a masters degree to your resume seems to result in adding to your family's bottom line.

MBA or Masters?

Posted by Ioana Sundius at 2009-08-02 03:52 PM
This survey is great for deciding to stay in school or not. The career-changing question is actually whether the data would bear going back specifically for an MBA, vs. resting content with a MSCS or PhD in CS. The salary (and title!) survey I'd like to see is MSEE/MSCS/MSOther vs. MBA: salary and role (PM, Senior PM, Line PM, Director of PM, VP, etc) vs. experience for the technical MS vs MBA crowd.

Essentially, as many switch their careers into PM having accumulated advanced degrees and experience under their belts, they want to find out if at some point there will be a growth plateau for lack of an MBA (say, it becomes very difficult to become a VP of products).