Course description

• Gaining a respected Chartered Management Institute (CMI) qualification alongside your degree will boost your professional credibility and future prospects
• You can achieve exemptions from Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) professional qualifications too
• Our professional mentoring scheme will inspire and motivate you - you’ll have the opportunity to be supported by a CMI mentor at every stage of your degree
• You’ll build specialist skills in financial analysis and projections so that you can hit the ground running from day one in a job
• Work-related learning, live projects, case studies and business simulations enable you to apply the theory to practice
• Global perspectives enrich your learning: our students have broadened their horizons with study exchanges in Barcelona and fieldtrips to Copenhagen
• You can choose to take a placement year between years two and three of your degree

Strong financial management is essential to a prosperous business. By combining management know-how with financial expertise, you’ll be ideally placed to deliver practical business solutions that ensure any organisation fulfils its potential.

By the time you graduate from the BA (Hons) Business Management and Finance, you’ll be taking financial analysis and projections in your stride. You’ll have the specialist skills to assess the financial health of an organisation, control and co-ordinate its financial resources effectively, and help it avoid common pitfalls in performance management. You’ll also have a strong understanding of corporate governance.

Accreditation

We have developed this course in close consultation with the premier professional body for managers, the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). It is one of the few degrees in the country where you can graduate with the CMI Level 5 Diploma in Management and Leadership alongside your degree.

The Diploma is the benchmark qualification for full CMI membership and takes you a step towards Chartered Manager status, signalling to prospective employers that you’re suited for senior leadership roles and rapid promotion. You won’t need to take extra exams or coursework to achieve the Diploma: our combined module and CMI assessments offer a smooth route to both qualifications.

Throughout the degree, you will become an affiliate member of the CMI, at no extra cost, with access to networking events, online resources and additional benefits to support your career development and enhance your employability.

If you aspire to a career with a financial focus, the course also features optional modules offering exemptions from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) papers. It gives you a head start if you would like to qualify as a chartered management accountant eventually.

How you will learn

Our ‘scaffolded’ approach to learning provides a smooth transition so that you can ease your way into both university-level study and business management practice. It means that you’ll have full support in the early stages of the degree but will gradually move towards greater independence as your knowledge deepens and you start to immerse yourself in the wider business community. By stage three, you will be able to take greater charge of your own learning, with module tutors advising and directing your studies.

Thanks to your contact with personal tutors, engagement with CMI mentors and participation in University events, you’ll become more attuned to professional behaviour and build your skills in critical thinking, creativity and self-reliance.

Another of our priorities is to foster a new generation of responsible business leaders with a strong moral compass. Throughout the course, you will therefore look at the role of business in wider society, exploring issues ranging from environmental sustainability to child labour, ethical governance to responsible innovation.

You’ll learn through different methods including:

• formal lectures, sometimes involving guest speakers
• tutor-led and student-led seminars
• one-to-one and small group tutorials
• work experience projects
• work-related learning
• self-directed study
• optional placement and internship opportunities
• video discussions with overseas partner institutions

How you are assessed

Assessment is mainly via coursework which can take forms such as:

• traditional essays and reports
• group project work
• research and consultancy projects
• presentations
• posters
• design of digital materials
• in-class tests
• computer-based assessments