Very often, management students stand on this cross
road and wonder, PGDM or MBA? Which one will
land me my dream job? Which one makes me academically better? Which one is
meant more for me and is not the way of the herd? A very common debate! Let us
sort this out for you.
“An
MBA is for those who seek a university programme to get a holistic view of
Management while the PGDM is for those who seek specialisation in a particular
area of their interest,” feels V. Venkataramana, Dean, School of Management
Studies, University of Hyderabad.
Source :http://bit.ly/20MXD0R
As far credibility of a diploma vs. degree stand,
there are times a PGDM might end up scoring higher than a plain MBA because it
might be suited better to the job description.
While an MBA is regulated by the UGC, a
PGDM is regulated by the AICTE. This gives institutions offering a PGDM course
higher autonomy than those offering plain, vanilla MBA courses. Even though
both courses give you an insight into and knowledge of Business Administration,
the approach and concentration of what is taught is fairly different.
PGDM tackles the more practical fields of
education as compared to MBA that provides you academic knowledge. The basic
difference between the two is that the former makes you street smart and the
other makes you book wise. Hence, more of professionals who want to advance
their fields should usually go in for a PGDM.
Fee structure for PGDM courses is much higher as compared to MBAs but if your purpose is to seek
advancement in your chosen field, a PGDM might be a better card to pick over a
generic MBA which might end up not helping you at all. Since a person would be
devoting an exact same amount of time (i.e. 2 years) one might want to work
toward a specific goal than being the jack of all trade and master of none.
One of the key things where PGDM triumphs
over MBA is the interval in which the curriculum is updated. Since recognised
universities hand out MBAs, the curriculum there is a little rigid compared to
the fairly autonomous institutes that aren’t governed by the UGC.
Usually, a curriculum update takes less time and is more fluid while pursuing
PGDM.