MBA Master of Business Administration

Enrich your career through Aston Business School’s MBA. Equip yourself with the skillset to handle real-world challenges that businesses face whilst developing your leadership skills, teamworking effectiveness and entrepreneurial perspective.

Location: Aston University, Birmingham

The Aston MBA will encourage you to think like an entrepreneurial leader from the start, challenging you at every stage, to personally and professionally develop, through a highly practical, experiential approach to learning.

This is not just a course. This is a new perspective to enhance your future career.

How will my skills develop?

You will approach complex challenges through real-world business problems that you will be tasked with solving. You will think like a business leader, working through challenges by understanding how different functions interact in order to identify solutions for both big and small organisations.

This means, you will cover a broad range of business topics through a hands-on learning experience, equipping yourself with an extensive understanding of how businesses operate in today’s fiercely competitive global commercial environment.

You will discover cutting-edge leadership concepts and frameworks, and put them into practice with applied exercises and real-life business projects. You will develop your ability to inspire and lead enterprises, and be a force for positive change within organisations.

Working independently as well as part of a team, you will identify where your skills need to develop in order for you to personally and professionally develop. You will be exposed to team coaching principles, developing your own personal development plan, as well as have plenty of opportunities to network with, and hear from, industry leaders.

How will this help my career?

We’ll help you to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and master the art of critical analysis and strategic thinking. This will allow you to perceive opportunities and overcome complex commercial challenges.

You will also study the Aston Edge, our personal development module, which which help to build your self-confidence, develop essential soft skills, and develop your career development plan, helping you to achieve your professional goals. Throughout the programme you will also engage with employers, guest speakers, and careers and networking event activity.

Your teaching will be delivered by a highly-regarded teaching faculty, which is made up of leading academics and experienced professionals. Our teaching philosophy is based on putting business principles into practice, meaning you will learn through a series of applied, task-based activities.

You will also build your MBA around your own aspirations. This means you will get to choose the modules that best suit your interests and career goals and you will even shape your Final Project to suit you. This could be a consulting project tackling a real business issue, a dissertation, or setting up a new business, researching a market, developing a strategic plan and a business launch. All of these options build on your learning through your MBA and are great opportunities to demonstrate your skills, whether you’re looking to lead your own business, or further progress in a specific industry or organisation.

All of this creates a rewarding learning experience that will transform you and your career.

What makes the Aston MBA experience so unique?

The Aston MBA has been designed and will be delivered based on the following principles:

• Participant development: We will develop ambitious, entrepreneurial, confident and responsible leaders of the future.
  
• The learning experience: This will be built on a foundation of innovative, applied, integrative and authentic teaching practices
  
• The curriculum: This will be strategically focused, flexible and reflective of the challenges and opportunities of global enterprise.
  
• The learning environment: We will build an environment where inclusion, difference and collaboration are both understood and valued.
  
• Thought leadership: We will strive to recognise and address the trends and issues that will have real impact on global enterprise and leadership in the future.

Links to industry

At Aston you will benefit from our strong relationships with the business community, from start-ups to leading international forms, across many industry sectors.

We’ve worked closely with our partners to help shape our MBA programme. This has helped us to ensure that you’re well prepared for the challenges of modern-day business. It also gives employers confidence that they can recruit highly skilled graduate who can become future leaders in business.

Our graduates have secured high profile roles with leading international firms across a variety of sectors, including investment banking, management consultancy, manufacturing and rail transport. Recent graduates have been successful in securing positions with blue-chip companies, such as Morgan Stanley, KPMG, Standard Chartered Bank and Amcor. Thanks to our Aston Alumni network, you will have the chance to connect with these former graduates in a range of professions.

Study abroad opportunities

A wide, but alternative, range of study abroad options will be available for January starts. If you are an international student, your visa will still be valid until the end of May the year following your entry date.

The Exchange Partnership Second Degree Pathway

We partnership with some of the world's most highly ranked business schools.

Start your global career

If you plan to study your MBA with Aston, a second degree is yours for the taking.

All Aston Business School students can apply to undertake a second Master degree as part of our Exchange Partnership Pathway. In addition to the ambition to study overseas, you will need to have successfully completed the first year of your studies at Aston. In our partnership with these prestigious institutions we have acknowledged the quality of each other’s degrees.

This means that, when you go overseas, you will already have credits from Aston Business School towards the degree that you choose to study overseas. Apart from an administration fee of £1,250, there are no additional tuition fees to pay if you are selected to study at one of our partner Business Schools. Please note however that places are limited, subject to availability and an application process and the final decision is made by the partner).

We partner with some of the world’s leaders in business education to offer the Exchange Partnership Second Degree Pathway. Each school shares Aston’s philosophy for employability and offers courses that reflect the needs of industry. The Exchange Partnership Second Degree Pathway is similar to an exchange opportunity, but you’ll spend an additional year at one of our partner institutions and, if successful, will graduate with a second masters degree.

You will deepen your learning and demonstrate dedication to your subject area whilst also embracing a new culture. You will deepen your learning and demonstrate dedication to your subject area whilst also embracing a new culture. The Exchange Partnership Second Degree Pathway is offered in collaboration with institutions across the globe. See more information about our partner institutions.

Trips and visits

You will do much of your learning out of the classroom. At Aston we take students to visit companies and gain first-hand insights in a business setting.

Thanks to our close partnerships across the business community, our MBAs have had the opportunity to spend time with prestigious companies, such as Jaguar Land Rover, Ford, Amazon and Aston Villa Football Club, as well as a number of small to medium-sized enterprises in order to appreciate the challenges faced by smaller firms.

You will also benefit from inspiring guest lectures from top executives and experts across various business sectors. They will impart valuable insights from industry, helping to enhance your commercial understanding. These are also a fantastic opportunity to network and make new professional contacts.

Each year we take our full-time MBA students for a one-week residential to a partner school in Europe. This trip gives you the chance to explore the history and culture of the city, attend lectures at our partner institution, network with your fellow MBAs, and visit local multinational organisations, to give you real business insight. Please note, that international visits are subject to the availability of our partner schools, risk assessment based on the University’s risk assessment policy and guidelines and foreign travel advice at the time of planning.