One hundred years ago (in 1908), a group of higher educators launched a new professional master’s degree called the MBA. Their aim: to meet the anticipated needs of 20th century business, which would be characterized, they thought, not by product specialty but by bigness. Today, MBA programs graduate about 90,000 students per year and are considered to have provided a singular advantage to American business.
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Will the Professional Science Master’s, the science-based professional degree created nine decades after the MBA, manage to meet the needs of 21st century private and public enterprises? That’s the view (and hope) of the directors of 134 PSM programs at 71 universities, their employer partners and the 2,500 math/science graduates now enrolled.