Project management describes the process of a person that leads teams toward completing project goals. In an organization, a project manager will maneuver around project constraints, such as scope, time, and budget, to produce a finished project that suits a client’s objectives.
It’s clear to see why a project manager is essential in the business sector, but why would a student need to use time management, budgeting, and organization skills in a college setting?
Why Study Project Management?
Before we get into how project management skills benefit college students, let’s take a look at why studying project management as a career or degree option could be a really great idea.
1. Project Management is Incredibly Versatile
Employers are looking for skilled project managers to fill positions in multiple sectors, such as law, technology, finance, construction, and engineering. Since every job requires a person to plan and run projects, your skills would be instrumental in virtually any sector at any time.
2. Project Management Offers High Salaries
Project management jobs are challenging, rewarding, and well-paid. If you have a degree in project management (or a lot of experience), you can earn $80,000 to $135,000 a year plus benefits. However, salaries range significantly based on chosen field and project difficulty.
3. Project Management Keeps You Engaged
If you want a career that encourages non-stop learning and improvement, consider becoming a project manager. While you constantly have to learn new ways to effectively do your job, you also need to conduct market, technology, and customer research to stay on top of your field.
Why Should Students Learn Project Management?
Whether you prefer to use online courses or books to sharpen your PM skills, you’ll never regret learning about project management, as you’ll gain skills that will help you excel in academics.
1. Planning and Organization
Full-time college students have to work on several tasks at once. If you don’t break projects down into smaller steps, you may feel overwhelmed. Project management can help you plan and organize tasks by deciding who’s doing what and when which helps you meet deadlines.
2. Making Schedules
Judging work, school, and social life is difficult, but schedules can make everything more manageable, not just your projects. For example, if you have to work 4 days a week, you can block out time around your job for socializing. This helps achieve a healthy work-life balance.
3. Resource Management
Resource management, be it time, money, or human effort, is always in short supply. By using project management skills and tools like an advanced Gantt chart, you can understand what you’re working with and the number of resources you can spare. This skill is especially vital for handing in group projects on time.
4. Driving Teamwork
Teamwork is important for any project, even if you’re working individually. You’ll likely pull ideas from various sources, like the internet, books, and other humans. If you’re able to ask the right questions, research well, and be creative, you’ll improve the overall quality of your school work.
5. Help With Integration
Without integration, projects that rely on teamwork won’t get very far. After all, you’re pulling different graphics and text together to form one complete project, so each part needs to make sense when pooled together. Project management helps you seamlessly integrate projects.
6. Facilitates Change
An unexpected event can put the breaks on any project at any time. In a business setting, you’re expected to produce a finished product unless you have a very good reason for the delay. Project management skills can help you successfully adapt to changes and take them in stride.
7. Stay on Budget
Project managers are talented at staying on budget, even when the going gets tough. As a college student, you have fewer resources to work with. Therefore, you’ll need to know how to accurately assess costs and leave space in your budget in case the project scope changes.
8. Better Use of Information
The ability to manage new knowledge effectively can help you improve how you approach other projects. A project manager needs to organize and manage data sets and other information to retain what they learned once the project is over. This ensures you don’t lose it or forget it.
9. Improved Work Quality
When you’re able to plan projects and delegate to the right people, you increase the quality of your work. By implementing these valued project management skills, you’re able to maintain high standards across your projects, which makes it more likely you’ll get a good grade.
10. Learn from Mistakes
It’s common for people to be afraid of making mistakes, but there’s nothing wrong with missing the mark. If you don’t get a good grade on a project, it doesn’t mean you failed. You only fail if you stop trying. Project management skills can help you learn and grow from your mistakes.