MBA - Master of Business Administration
| Self-study courses offer you specially designed texts and online support, giving you the freedom to take your study with you, all over the world. Route description Most EBS students are well established in career structures and often have family and financial commitments that rule out the option of full-time study. The self- and part time study programmes have been designed for these people. Full time student are younger with an average age of 27. Self-study offers a flexible alternative to this and many students now prefer this approach to formal taught courses. The courses allow you to obtain your desired qualification and develop your business skills without spending any time away from your home or workplace. Structure Although courses can be taken in any order, examination results suggest that students who do a core course before tackling an associated elective perform better in the elective as a result. The core course in strategic planning is the only core course that refers to concepts and knowledge from the other core courses, and we strongly recommend taking it as the last core course. Duration If you choose the self-study route, you may complete the degree at a pace that best suits your needs and circumstances. Most self-study students sit three examinations per year, spread over four exam intakes. This means it would take an average of three years to complete the MBA programme and even less if you have exemptions. Teaching and learning methods This MBA has been developed as a result of extensive research into teaching techniques and 15 years of development to produce courses that recreate the level of learning in a classroom environment. The self-study courses comprise a specially designed learning text and access to a website to support your learning. Click here to work through an interactive business scenario that demonstrates the online support. Course texts Each text introduces a concept. The concept is expanded, applied to real-life situations and rounded off with a variety of examples. All courses are divided into modules, each accompanied by a set of test materials. This allows you to measure understanding and application using multiple-choice questions, short essay questions and case studies. Practice versions of final examinations are provided for each course, along with model solutions. They reflect the difficulty of the actual final examinations and help you assess whether you are ready to take it. Course website The course website provides you with ready access to your course text in a downloadable. The content is regularly reviewed. Is this a challenging programme? This is a high-quality graduate programme. Students consistently tell us that the exams are tough but fair and that the materials are very applicable to their work. You must study seriously to pass the exams, but the programme was designed so that an intelligent and motivated individual should be able to master the material and pass the exams, regardless of academic background or career history. | Do I need a background in specific disciplines to succeed in this programme? The courses do not assume prior knowledge; they begin with core concepts and gradually build in complexity. The programme was designed to be done entirely by self-study, so all the practice problems and case studies are built into the course materials, along with their answers. You will be able to check your progress as you work your way through the material. All courses contain practice final exams. What happens if the programme requirements change suddenly? Some students have expressed concern about the possibility that the university will change its rules and regulations midstream, such as requiring an additional course or making substantial changes to the content of a course. The university will make no significant changes to the requirements for obtaining the MBA degree without a seven-year notice, so that anyone already in the programme will not be affected by the changes. Major changes in the content of a course will not be examinable for two years after their inclusion. New electives, study routes and qualifications may be added as the programme expands, giving enrolled students more options, but the basic requirements will remain the same. Can I transfer credits from this programme onto other educational awards? Because Heriot-Watt University has a Royal Charter, it is considered the equivalent of, for example, an American university with regional accreditation. Therefore credits earned through Heriot-Watt University should be accepted by any accredited institution of higher learning. However, universities are highly independent institutions, often making their own rules regarding academic matters.It is up to the individual school to decide whether credit units may be transferred, and if so, how many. Most schools set a maximum number of credits that can be transferred in and applied towards a degree programme. Since those schools will be awarding the degree, they claim the right to do most of the educating that results in the awarding of it. If you anticipate the possibility of using the credits earned in your Heriot-Watt MBA programme for another school's degree, then research your options carefully. Different schools accept different numbers of transfer credits.A few universities still think that education can happen only when students sit in rows in a classroom and are lectured by a professor. These universities will not accept units earned through distance learning, no matter how rigorous the programme or prestigious the educator. Fortunately, there are not too many universities with this attitude.What rankings has the MBA programme received?British universities are periodically ranked by newspapers and other organisations; none of these rankings are official. Edinburgh Business School does not participate in private sector ranking exercises, because they measure academic performance by non-relevant organisational inputs rather than by outputs, such as students' performance in rigorous final examinations. |