$65k is way too expensive to charge for this. Just how greedy is CMU to charge this much? Furthermore Product m Managers are not CEOs, the departments which align to deliver the product don't report to them, nor do they control what resources are allocated or have budgetary control.

PM's have to negotiate and gain consensus on what is to be built and contend with resources available. In software you can be at the mercy of the development manager and what they want to build, can sometimes be at odds with what you want built. Other times you may have a dev lead who just decides that like as they are building it, they will code what they damn well please, and ignore your architecture team (if you are fortunate to have one).

Those are just some of the things a Product Manager learns to deal with to get their product built and shipped.

Good points, it turns out that $65k is lower than many of our other master's programs. We also ran through the numbers and that tuition x #students doesn't cover much more than our basic costs. We are a non-profit after all, and one that has a very strong track record in its educational program.

What you're telling us is actually very well aligned with what we've heard from our alums and from some companies. Yes, product managers are not CEOs and can't always just tell people what to do. Product managers work with their direct team (typically some engineers, QA, 1-2 UX designers, possibly a data scientist), but also need to know how to interface with marketing, sales, and others. Part of our curriculum looks at how to work with and positively influence others to achieve desired goals. But you're right, that's not easy, though there are some strategies and tactics that work better than others.

So, I'm a PM at Mozilla who did an MDes in Interaction Design at CMU. I'm a dataset of one, but my experience there was absolutely worth the cost. A few notes:

- 65k is a lot, but Pittsburgh is cheap compared to the Northern California or New York or almost anywhere. Someone on the thread tossed out 65k a year in additional cost of living; this number is way off. You can get a room for < 800 bucks a month (possibly significantly less if you're willing to commute even a little). Food is cheap, there is modest but acceptable public transit, the city's pretty bikable, and there's plenty of free stuff to do etc etc. TL;DR Pittsburgh is great.

- There are lots of fellowships for grads available through CMU. I TAed Web dev and creative coding courses and IIRC, the money I got for doing so completely covered my rent and internet bill.

- If you've spent any time at all on the CMU campus, it's pretty clear the the institution is absolutely unique WRT the depth and breadth of CS, Design, HCI, Robotics, and Business talent. BTW, this list is not exhaustive. The sheer density and variety and stuff happening on campus is simply not comparable to working at a startup (which requires laser focus). A big part of the CMU experience is expanding your horizons about what's possible in ways that MOOCS (and I daresay industry) cannot.

- Also CMU grad programs place nearly EVERYBODY. It's the primary reason I went there as a chronically underpaid, semi-clueless freelancer having trouble breaking into industry. Their relationships with industry – both formal, and through causal peer/alumni connections – are pretty staggering.

All of that being said, I didn't move into a PM role until I'd spent significant time in the UX org at Mozilla learning how the sausage gets made. I definitely only started to grok the on-the-ground dynamics of product management after several years in industry, and I'm still learning every day. My sense is that most PMs have similar trajectories of transitioning into the role after time in industry. I'd be curious about whether industry would look favorably on hiring PMs directly out of school.

Can't say this is a compelling argument. Being lower cost than other programs just tells me those programs are overpriced too. Also the whole nonprofit argument is baseless; did you know the NFL was structured as a nonprofit until 2015? Universities and nonprofits in general are well known to waste funds, especially on administrative positions and vanity projects.

Not to call this a vanity project, and obviously I am not privy to all of the financial information at CMU so I may be wrong and this program may just be quite expensive. The main problem I see with something like this is that

1: As with most Master's programs, it's probably just a cash grab by the university. Although since this is CMU I assume the placement will be very good, I'm also of the opinion that programs like these can, but not necessarily will, taint the overall reputation of the university by setting lower standards.

2: It's fine for a few universities to offer degrees in Product Management. But the thing is, the market (at least within tech) for this role isn't THAT large, especially when you consider that a lot of product managers start out as developers to begin with. If enough universities start also offering these programs, I assume the placement and utility of the program will suffer greatly. We don't need a glut of PMs the same way we had a glut of lawyers following the recession.

Well, if you honestly believe that Carnegie Mellon University is the same as the NFL as a non-profit, especially given our long track record of education and research, there really isn't anything I can say to convince you. So let's just end this here.

His/her point is that being a non-profit is often just a legal structure with tax protection. It is not a valid reason to charge a high price for something. Not addressing his/her point does not make it any less valid.

Importantly, faculty and admin staff at both the NFL and CMU are both highly paid.

Is this an example of the persistence and determination in the face of adversity and criticism one can expect to learn at CMU?

CMU has a great reputation and has come out with a program that is likely to be very successful and the top question is about price.

Everyone in higher education should pay attention. We may be seeing the tipping point here where people start questioning whether the best move for them is to borrow $100k for a non-mgmt degree.

I think our generation will be the first to raise our kids by saying college is great, but only for the right price.

Please don't trot out the non-profit defense of private universities.

As someone who attended CMU for an MBA and took product management courses in the SCS, it's likely worth it. The classes I took from SCS around use-case driven design, project management of software projects, and platform strategy were some of the most directly-applicable classes in the entire MBA program.

By way of comparison, I think an MBA from CMU runs somewhere > $110k these days. It is one of the most expensive schools in the country (largely due to its until-recently-non-existent endowment; a rarity among top private schools). Hopefully once the settlement with Maxtor shakes out the school will end up with a healthy endowment (I know they're not getting all $10B but $2B would be a nice start for an endowment).

Also, I reject the statement that as a product manager you have no control over the resources. In a product-focused matrix organization, the product manager is ideally responsible for P&L over the product, which means they absolutely do get control over budget. Product management has changed a lot over the last 10 years, and what used to be a powerless position that was a glorified business analyst is now getting budget and control as tech companies reorganize themselves to look like CPGs.

You may reject it, but you then say ideally. My experience comes from working in technology firms in Silicon Valley for 38 years, with the last 12 in Product Management. Matrix organizations are a rarity these days in high tech and P&L responsibility in the hands of PMs even more so. Further development teams do NOT report to you. Yet the CMU announcement trotted out the PM as the CEO, meme. It is not true and does prospective students a disservice.

CPGs = Consumer Packaged Goods?

Also - can you take individual classes like the ones you referenced at CM? or do you need to be in the Masters Program

What is the settlement between CMU and Maxtor?

~12yr PM here - curious how you teach interactions with Eng, Design and other disciplines (at Facebook, we call this 'Leadership and Drive').

This has always been the toughest area for me to teach and I'm wondering if you can give some detail on how you approach this in your component that you mentioned (interactive workshops/personal mentoring).

This is the part I'm the most confused about with this program. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I don't think this part of PM can be taught. The lessons learned from interacting with designers and engineers is something only experience can grant you, and a lot of that typically comes from being a designer or engineer yourself prior to getting into PM full-time.

>I'd love to be proven wrong, but I don't think this part of PM can be taught.

Nothing in the entire world can be taught. It must be learnt.

Doesn't it seem like a better idea to apply for a startup accelerator like YC or 500 startups and get paid to get real-world product experience vs paying to get theoretical product experience?

Good question, and it's a personal decision as to what a person believes their best path is.

Speaking as someone who has co-founded a successful company (Wombat Security Technologies, over a thousand customers for our security training software), I really didn't know what I didn't know. As an undergrad and a PhD student in CS, I learned tons about graphics, distributed systems, hardware, algorithms, and so on. But that didn't prepare me to read balance sheets, understand how to do a good competitive analysis, know how to manage people, know the best methods for rapidly prototyping and validating ideas, how to do sales and marketing and (more importantly) how to measure it, and so on.

Just on this last point, like most techies, I originally had a negative view of sales and marketing. I never realized how hard it was, how good you have to be at it, and that it can actually be measured in useful ways. If you're lucky enough to be part of a good team that can teach you these and other skills, that's really fantastic.

Now, our Master's of Product Management won't teach you all of the skills above, but it covers many of them. It also does it in a safe space where it's ok to try out ideas, take risks, and fail. You can do it without having to worry about making payroll (though of course there is tuition), or having to find space to lease, or figuring out founder's pies, or worrying about lots of other logistics and paperwork.

That is, at a startup, you are focused solely on one thing: survival. You don't have a lot of time for reflection, for deep thinking, for understanding what are best practices backed by lots of empirical evidence. Like I had when doing my startup, you might also have a narrow view of things because you simply don't know what you don't know. You don't know what other options are possible. And making too many mistakes can be fatal for a startup, resulting in bad feelings from your co-founders and funders.

Now obviously no single master's program can address all of that, or even guarantee success. These are just very different paths for learning, with lots of different goals and tradeoffs.

It's also worth pointing out that startups are not for everyone. Some people might be at a large company and want to make a career change, but still want to stay at a large company. Again, different goals and different tradeoffs.

Thanks for the reply. I definitely agree on many of the points you mentioned. I wanted to pose the question for the HN community because there is probably a slightly stronger negative bias towards this technique of gaining experience.

I definitely look forward to hearing about the experience of this class after its first one or two semesters.

I imagine this is intended for large companies that have hundreds or thousands of employees. Product manager is a specialized role that incorporates strategy and business development. I'm sure startup experience would be great too, but this is different. Product Management often targets projects with multi-year contracts whose lifetime span careers.

Interesting idea!

I imagine a number of interested folks might ask "I'm considering a masters in CS or maybe this new PM one; why should I choose one over the other?". How will you answer them?

Good question, it really depends on what you want to do in your career.

If you search for "CMU CS Master's", you will end up here: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/masters-programs . We have 26 options for master's programs, ranging from machine learning, human computer interaction, language technologies, robotics, and more.

The high order bit here is that our Master's of Product Management is focused on the combination of business, tech, and UX with an eye towards jobs in managing the strategy, design, implementation, and rollout of products and services. In contrast, most other CS master's programs focus entirely on strengthening your portfolio of technical skills.

Hi Jason,

I have a few questions.

While I have been working in tech industry as backend engineer for 3 years (startups including) I don't have an undergrad degree in CS/Software (I have an M.Sc in Physics). Would that disqualify a candidate like me from being admitted?

What advantage would this course give over an M.B.A?

What kind of recognition do you think this degree would get in the industry being that it is a new program?

Not having an undergrad degree in CS would not disqualify you. We are looking primarily for people with strong tech skills, for several reasons.

When we talked to companies and alums of our other programs who are now product managers, they mentioned that the vast majority of product managers came from engineering backgrounds. This is necessary for leading teams of engineers, to understand how products work, what the tradeoffs are, and where trends are going. It's also very useful for additional credibility with respect to the engineers.

Our Master's of Product Management (MSPM) also requires students to take a technical elective in computer science, e.g. cloud computing, parallel computing, machine learning, networking, etc. We want our students to have technical depth too, since that will help with the above as well as making students better at charting out potential business opportunities.

The main advantages of this program over an MBA are that it is 1 year (instead of 2), it offers more technical depth in CS than MBA programs, and it also brings in a strong component of user experience design. This latter part of UX is something that many of our alums commented on as being important for products and for product managers. Other advantages (though it depends on which MBA track one chooses) are courses in managing people (incentives, motivations, negotiation), high tech marketing, basics of data science, and a capstone course focused on putting those skills together.

With respect to recognition, it's a tough question to answer since it is a new program. One main advantage here is the reputation of CMU's School of Computer Science and the Tepper School of Business. We also have strong industry ties and an active Career Opportunities Center to help students find good jobs.

I've heard from other academics (though from universities with less prestige) that there is an effort to expand programs to accept foreign students that would otherwise be turned away either due to space constraints or poor program fit. The way it was described to me was they didn't want to dilute their CS or MBA programs but still wanted to accept the foreign students. They are seeing a demand for masters degrees from both sides: demand for classroom space by foreign applicants and demand for entry level employees with master's degrees by employers.

Curious if Carnegie Mellon is following the same train of thought.

I know that some public universities have this conflict, in terms of wanting to serve their mission of helping in-state students, but also needing more money to do so (ie foreign students can never be in-state, so they always pay full tuition). It's a bad bind because of decreasing state funds spent on universities. My friends and I often talk about how many public universities get so little from their respective states that they are essentially private universities but are still constrained by their state legislatures. In contrast, private universities don't have as strong an incentive to accept more foreign students.

Anyways, that's a digression.

The short answer is that we are keeping standards very high for admissions for this program. Also, having been in academia for many years, I can easily say that there are lots of brilliant people from all over the world.

I think the success will depend largely on what H1B reforms are brought in and if taking the academic (MS) first will be of continued benefit (as it currently is). Personally I think this is one of the better options vs the body shop route. And there are plenty of smart qualified people around the world as well.

I wish I could've done this as my undergrad. There don't seem to be enough people who realise how important this cross section of skills is because each one feeds back in the others, whether that be positively or negatively.

gl with everything!

Thanks, much appreciated!

As someone who did his undergrad at CMU - and loved it - it's great to see this. I studied Information Systems with a minor in Design, and it set me up for an awesome string of startup jobs where I could blend my various interests and skill sets.

CMU is an incredibly unique school that has world-class programs in business, computer science, and design. They are especially perfect for this kind of multidisciplinary program.

Im wondering what the difference is between this new program and the Msc. Business Informatics programs already available (at least at European universities, Im getting mine at Utrecht University). From what Im reading they sound very similar, with the outlined key strengths in your post being virtually the same.

Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions here.

Looking over your program at Utrecht, it feels like the Business Informatics program is more geared towards general business processes with respect to technologies. The closest course at Utrecht to what we're envision with the Master's of Product Management is your Software Product Management elective.

It also seems like the expected roles for people coming out of your program would be general kinds of managers, consultants, or researchers.

There's also a certain underlying style and set of assumptions in the coursework in your program that, for lack of a better term, is European. Have you noticed that in the US that computer science theory usually means complexity theory, but in Europe, it often means automata theory? Sort of the same thing here. There's a strong emphasis in your program on knowledge networks, methods and processes, and so on. It's not that one is better than the other, it's just very different underlying assumptions and starting points for a curriculum.

Would this program consider/accept corporate technical executives (aged 40+) who are looking to launch startup ventures?

Would love to attend, but we don't fit in the mold of regular applicants for this program (as described in the FAQ)

What do you envision placement of graduates looking like? How might this degree stack up to an elite MBA in terms of how employers view it?

We talked to a lot of companies and alums before rolling out this program, and there was uniform agreement that industry really needs a lot more (good) product managers.

One further observation was that Google, Facebook, Yelp, and likely other companies had their own internal programs for training product managers, in large part because of a mismatch in supply and demand.

So we believe that placement will be good and in high demand at prominent tech companies.

In terms of comparing the Master's of Product Management (MSPM) to MBAs, that's hard to say at this point. One of the big differences is that the MSPM has a stronger component in UX design and computer science than a typical MBA. It would also depend on what areas of business you specialize in your MBA, e.g. finance and marketing graduates would likely be viewed very differently from the MSPM graduates.

Hi Jason, The program looks like it's right up my alley, but the costs seem high(to me). What are the scholarship options available?

Currently no scholarship options. This is something we will revisit as the program gets larger.

We do have a staff member who can assist with financial aid. Given current projections of salary for product managers and likely high placement rates, I think that this would still be a good option, but that's also a personal decision that you would have to make.

Any chance of MOOCing some of the courses?

Currently no plans for a MOOC.

MOOCs have a less-than-positive view at CMU, in part because the evidence is strongly mixed as to their effectiveness in practice. One thing I've learned after being at CMU for many years is that people across the board here really care a lot about empirical evidence.

A MOOC would also make it hard to teach interpersonal skills, as well as assemble a cohort that can learn from each other.

will this program be offered in the silicon valley campus?

No, but there is a Master's of Software Management (MSM) there that might fit your needs.

http://www.cmu.edu/silicon-valley/academics/software-managem...

Some of the differences are that the Master's of Product Management (MSPM) has a much stronger emphasis on HCI and User Experience Design, and is on a different cycle. That is, the MSPM runs from January to December (1 full year, off cycle), whereas the Master's of Software Management is on the regular cycle. The MSM is also available for part-time students. Lastly, the MSM has a stronger focus on being an engineering manager, though there will be some overlap with being a product manager.

thanks

Doesn't seem like a teachable skill, frankly.