Postgraduate programmes: Business and financeAccounting Administration Banking Business Economics Finance HR Management Marketing Retailing
For graduates set on a career in business or finance, the competition has never been tougher. A degree is no longer enough to guarantee getting into a firm on a fast-track programme or even getting in at all. Increasingly, people are turning to taught postgraduate programmes as an excellent way to kick-start their career, boost an existing one or help make a career switch. Visit StudyBusinessMasters.com for more information on business-related postgraduate programmes. Postgraduate programmes in business
Find out more about postgraduate programmes in International Business. Postgraduate programmes in finance
Some Master’s in Finance programmes are extremely mathematical in nature and geared to producing “quants” — the financial engineers meant to design new derivatives and other immensely complicated products for Wall Street and The City (of London) to sell. These programmes are often found at highly prestigious universities (including Cambridge, Stanford, Berkeley, etc). Competition to get into these institutions is fierce, and predictably, their graduates have commanded high salaries from the leading finance firms in the world. More traditional programmes continue to focus on turning out traditional financial analysts, corporate finance specialists, and the like. Some of these programmes are geared to a specific industry, such as insurance or health care. Although quantitative in nature, they are no match for the rocket science taught in the financial engineering programmes. Similarly, their graduates tend not to command salaries equal to those offered to MBA graduates. Most Master’s in Finance programmes are one year long. Unsurprisingly, given the concentration of modern financial activities in London and New York, many of the leading programmes are in the UK and US. And given their appeal to practitioners, many programmes offer part-time options. Even those courses elsewhere in the world that were once taught largely or partially in languages other than English are switching their courses to English because it is definitively the international language of finance. Taught postgraduate programmes
For the one-year pre-experience master’s degrees and MBAs, the programme structure is similar. Typically, there are three phases (although they may be spread over four terms). The first covers compulsory core modules: the educational foundation for the programme, covering the essential basic knowledge the student requires. Research-based programmesMost business schools offer research degrees with a variety of routes towards gaining a doctorate. At Durham Business School, applicants with master’s-level research skills can take the three-year PhD programme (six years part time). Alternatively, if they lack a master’s-level degree containing the appropriate research-training content, they can take a one-year taught master’s in an appropriate subject and then switch on to the doctoral programme. English Language RequirementsIELTS scores of 6.5–7.0 or TOEFL scores of 100-107 are usually needed. Because of ongoing changes in the law we advise international students to regularly check the UKBA website to make sure they can fulfil the necessary requirements. Most individual institutions also have useful information on the Tier 4 requirements for international students, and can offer assistance in terms of student queries about their specific English language requirements. Click here to find out more about English Language requirements for International Students How much will it cost?A one-year taught master’s programme can cost anything between a few thousand pounds to well over £10,000, although there are different rates according to whether you are a European Union (EU) or non-EU student. Applications for funding or scholarships must be made well over a year in advance (information on the various institutional scholarships is available from the British Council website) and funding should always be arranged before you leave your home country. Graduate destinationsPostgraduate education is seen as a natural step to improving career prospects in business and finance.
Postgraduates head for a variety of career destinations, depending on the type of qualification. ‘Traditionally, most MBA students head for careers in consultancy, banking, finance,’ says Carl Tams, Membership Services Manager at AMBA, ‘although we have noticed a trend towards entrepreneurship, IT and general management both in public and private sectors.’
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In the global business world, it increasingly takes more than a first degree to carve out a career in business and finance making a postgraduate qualification more necessary than ever.
An alternative to an MBA is the Master’s in Finance. One reason for its popularity is that graduates of the leading programmes traditionally command MBA-like salaries. Another reason is that its specialised nature appeals to those who are, or wish to become, specialists, without a need for the general management underpinnings of an MBA. Thus, much of the MBA first year core — from operations management to marketing — may be of little value to someone who will trade currencies for most of his or her career.
