Should you have to take a qualification in project management before being allowed to work as project manager?

Question

There is a debate going on at uni regarding project management skills. I say that you can have the correct mind set to be a project manager but still lack basic skills to carry out the job effectively. The best way to ensure that these skills are in place is by education. Does anyone have any good articles which would back me up on this? (or convince me otherwise?)

Answer 1

Agreeing to your point, the best way to ensure that these skills are in place is "not only" by education, but huge amount of experience as:
1. No one can teach you all the possible scenarios, even if you take a course that offers 3000 case studies in an year.
2. Human relationship and handling human-human crises can never be taught, except for in real-life situations.
3. Project management involves balancing act between men, money, materials, machines, timelines, excuses, etc..., which certainly cannot be covered by just education.

Off-late, I read in a book that "You can buy the best books to teach yourself swimming, but it is up to you to seek a pool and dive to become an expert". This applies completely to project management.

Answer 2

It would be wise to go to com unity college or a require college and take a coarse in project management because there are different fields you can go in as a project manager,not only that if you have an employee get hurt on the jog and they lose one day of work it is OSHA recordable or a major contrastive on the job you better be prepare for OSHA,EPA,The Top Dog at the Refinery,and first but not last the company you are workin for because every employee on that job site is your responibilty.

Answer 3

Not necessarily, I think you can oversee a project without being a "Project Manager" but if you are using a specific project management system such as Prince2 then you should definitely receive training. I do think that in order to get the best person for a job they require the relevant training and support.

Answer 4

At my company, project managers are a waste of space, ponkly followwing up on work already completed by the helpdesk and implimentatiomn teams. Their services would be better deployed on those teams rather than as a project manager. Therefore my answer is that you don't need a uni education to become one, because all they are doing is chasing up other people.

Answer 5

If your organization required a particular process, then education on that process will help. But to Tiger's point (the first answer) formal education is only a part of the big picture and to think that it is enough is very naive. Experience is huge in areas like this where you are working with people and gray areas. Good Luck!

Answer 6

YES