UK school’s new masters programme

The London School of Economics is combining what it believes is the best of the traditional masters degree with the best of an MBA by launching a 21-month masters in management programme for those with little or no work experience.

The LSE – the London School of Economics and Political Science, to give it its full title – already runs a successful one-year programme for students with an undergraduate degree in business or related subjects. The extended degree will be a conversion degree for those who studied arts or sciences at undergraduate level and would like to develop business and management knowledge before entering the workplace.

The new programme will put the LSE into direct competition with many of the top continental European business schools, such as HEC and Essec in Paris, which offer highly ranked two-year masters programmes. It will also continue to build LSE’s reputation as a provider of masters-level programmes in management.

Last year the school’s department of management introduced two, one-year masters programmes, one in management and economics and the second in management, organisations and governance. Both were heavily over-subscribed. Indeed, the latter had 600 applicants for a proposed 20 places. The LSE ultimately enrolled 774 students on the course.

“What this tells me is that the LSE brand stretches to management quite effectively,” says Saul Estrin, head of the LSE’s management department and a former deputy dean at the London Business School.

While the new 21-month masters in management programme will cover the basic theories of management, it will also include a company internship between the first and second years.

“The degree has been designed very closely with recruiters,” says Dina Dommett, department of management project director.

Participants will also be able to take part in their second year in the Community of European Management Schools’ exchange programme, which takes students from Europe’s top universities and enables them to study in other countries and in some of Europe’s top companies, such as L’Oréal, Siemens and UBS, which are Cems partners.

The masters in management programme will begin in September, as will a second new management programme, the 12-month MSc in public management and governance.

Both will be housed in the LSE management department’s new building in central London.