BA in Business and Management with Business Placement

For the graduates of today and tomorrow, being competitive and employable depends on demonstrating innovation, flexibility and commitment to continued learning. We are looking for students who are inquisitive and wish to learn more by investigating and researching.

Flexibility – the BA Business and Management and BA Marketing degrees share a common first year, therefore may be possible to switch between courses upon successful completion of year one. (Students who require a Tier 4 visa will need to check this in advance with the Tier 4 regulations which are in place at the time).

Year 1

This introduces the study of key business topics.

Students start to develop business, investigation and project skills in a further module devoted to a range of business-related activities such as developing a business plan for a new start-up. There are five core modules and a choice of further business, economics or language optional module. The modules work together to build your knowledge and develop key skills and techniques.

• People, Management and Organisations
• Marketing Principles
• The Changing World of Business
• Financial Information for Managers
• Introduction to Business Research

A further optional module is chosen from a range which in the past has included:

• Economics and Psychology of Decision-Making
• New Venture Creation
• A foreign language

Year 2

The second-year sees the Business and Marketing degrees separate and students build towards their specialist areas, though half of the modules remain common. Investigative and key business skills are developed further and integrated across the entire second year as well as forming a basis for the third year. The importance of international aspects of business is highlighted. The Business and Management degrees focus on the management of operations and information systems and offer optional modules in areas such as marketing, entrepreneurship and business law.

The second-year consists of four compulsory modules:

• Research Methods and Statistics
• Managing in a Global Environment
• Information Systems
• Human Resource Management

 A further two optional modules are chosen from a range which in the past have included:

• Consulting in the Public Sector
• Operations Management
• Principles of Business Law
• Integrated Marketing Communications
• Entrepreneurship
• Consumer Psychology
• Strategic Brand Management
• A foreign language

Year 3

All of our degrees offer you the option of spending your third year gaining practical experience on a business placement. Business placements are a great way to develop your employment marketability and engage with employers early in their recruitment pipeline. We actively encourage you to explore this as an option within your degree. Placement requires a minimum of forty weeks of work experience and the placement begins in the summer following completion of the second year, and this then becomes the third year of a four-year degree programme. This allows you to really explore and understand your job and to find out if the career or company is for you.

• You will develop your practical skills, confidence and maturity.
• You can focus on a specific career path - many employers recruit graduates from their placement programme.
• You will be able to contextualise your studies better, be more mature in your attitude to work.
• You may decide to draw on your working experiences and access a more fulfilling dissertation research subject.
• You will gain invaluable job search and graduate research skills by engaging in the competitive placement recruitment process.

To ensure you are getting the most out of your experience, we support your placement in a number of ways:

First Year Bootcamps and Workshops help you to develop your Placement Strategy and to identify and develop those skills and competencies that will be critical to ensure you are attractive to potential placement employers. These typically involve Employers, Placement Mentors, representatives from Colleges, Societies and the Volunteering Community in Durham.

Second Year Workshops support you through the placement application process and allow you to develop into a supportive student group to travel along the road of gaining a placement together. They enable you to get to know those students who will return with you in the fourth year. Workshops typically involve employers and former placement students.

The DUBS Placement Programme includes a series of employer-led events which take place throughout term 1 and 2 and is open to all first-year and second-year placement students. The skills sessions and networking events allow students to develop essential employability skills as well as providing valuable insight into the recruitment process.

Placement Mentors: We have a mentorship scheme whereby former placement students share their experiences of the application process and placement with first and second-year students and those out on placement. If you become a placement mentor on your return to University you can continue to develop your interpersonal skills and slide back into your University life with another key role which may well develop a new sense of belonging as well as another valuable contribution to your CV.

Placement Tutors: Whilst you are on placement you are assigned a tutor who will visit you, liaise with your employer and ensure you gain the most from your experience.

The Business Placement year fees are set annually by the University.  For the definitive amount of the Business Placement year fees payable please contact our Placement Team.

*The offer of a place on a ‘with placement’ degree does not imply that Durham University Business School guarantees to find the student placement. The Business School, in association with the University, will assist students in finding and applying for placements, but it is the responsibility of the student to apply for and to obtain a placement (which is subject to approval by the Business School). In the event that a student is unable to obtain a placement, transfer to the equivalent ‘non-placement’ programme is guaranteed provided the student is eligible to transfer on academic grounds. In line with Home Office rules, students from outside the EU will transfer onto the ‘with business placement’ programme only once they have successfully secured a placement (normally at the end of their second year of study). Therefore due to visa requirements, we recommend that international students interested in the business placement year as part of their degree apply for this programme when making their application to us via UCAS.

Year 4

Central to year four is the Dissertation.  The other core module is Strategic Management which brings together student knowledge, experience and skills from all three years to look at how organisations develop their strategy. The Dissertation and three optional modules allow you considerable opportunities to focus your studies on areas of special interest and to engage more closely with the School’s research groups through seminars and guest speaker programmes.

Your final modules are chosen from a range which has previously included: 

• Global Marketing
• Corporate Governance
• Social Marketing
• Leadership
• Contemporary Issues in Management
• Corporate Responsibility
• Corporate Entrepreneurship
• Either Retail and Services Marketing/ or Service Operations Management
• Design Thinking
• Work, Organisation and Society
• Asia and the Pacific Rim
• A foreign language

We review course structures and core content (in light of e.g. external and student feedback) every year and will publish finalised core requirements for 2019 entry from September 2018.