BA in Economics with Placement Year

Our BA Economics concentrates on the fundamental theories and techniques to help you build a successful career in this competitive field. Taking in historic and current, domestic and international perspectives, you’ll develop an in-depth understanding of the subject at all levels.

Year 1

In the first year, in addition to the compulsory modules of Principles of Economics, Economic Methods, and The World Economy, you choose three further optional modules from a selection that currently includes:

• Accounting and Finance in Business
• Introduction to Environmental Economics
• Introduction to the History of Economic Thought
• A module is chosen from another department, which could include a foreign language.

Year 2

In the second year, you study three compulsory modules investigating Macroeconomics, Microeconomics and Economic Data Analysis, and choose three optional modules from a selection that currently includes:

• Behavioural and Experimental Economics
• Business Competition
• Corporate Finance
• Economics of Social Policy
• European Economics
• Intermediate Methods for Economics and Finance
• One module from another department, which could include 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 to engage with employers early in their recruitment pipeline. 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 Workshops and Bootcamps to 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 and representatives from Colleges, Societies and the Volunteering Community in Durham.

Second Year Workshops and Bootcamps 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

In the fourth year, you study a compulsory double module in which you write a Dissertation. In addition, you study four optional modules from a selection that currently includes:

• Advanced Microeconomic Theory
• Advanced Macroeconomic Theory
• Applied Econometrics
• Development of Economics 
• Environmental Economics and Policy
• History of Economic Thought
• Industrial Organisation 
• International Economics
• Labour Economics 
• Monetary Economics 
• Public Economics 
• Security Investment Analysis
• Game Theory and Applications
• Post-Keynesian Economics
• One module from another department.