Program Overview

Our four-year BSc Finance and Management (including foundation year), will be suitable for you if your academic qualifications do not yet meet our entrance requirements for the three-year version of this course and you want a programme that increases your subject knowledge as well as improves your academic skills in order to support your academic performance.

This four-year course includes a foundation year (Year Zero), followed by a further three years of study. During your Year Zero, you study three academic subjects relevant to your chosen course as well as a compulsory academic skills module. You are an Essex student from day one, a member of our global community based at the most internationally diverse campus university in the UK.

After successful completion of Year Zero in our Essex Pathways Department, you progress to complete your course with our Essex Business School.

From year one you will continue developing your academic skills alongside quantitative skills appropriate for the finance sector, and the qualitative, discursive skills appropriate for management and leadership. This course is designed to give you career flexibility after graduation. We help you to develop the quantitative skills appropriate for the finance sector, as well as the qualitative, discursive skills appropriate for management and leadership. You may seek to lead a finance team within an organisation, pursue a career as a financial analyst or use your business knowledge to work in any area of management. In your third year, you also have the option to undertake a paid work placement to develop your professional skills and further enhance your CV.

Our BSc Finance and Management degree teaches you about how businesses make financial decisions and study international financial markets. Your management modules also develop the necessary skills and knowledge to be an effective leader.

We use real-life examples to apply theory to practice and you regularly have access to our virtual trading floor. Here, you can learn how to use real-world Bloomberg data, information and analytics to make better business decisions and practise trading stocks and securities using X_TRADER. This industry leading software enables you to trade multiple markets from a single screen.

Management topics may include:

• management, innovation and new technologies
• organisational behaviour
• business strategy
• human resource management
• leadership in organisations

Finance topics may include:

• corporate finance
• financial management
• portfolio analysis
• financial modelling
• risk management
• financial markets and trading

Your first year introduces you to finance, management, accounting and economics so you receive a fully-rounded business education. As your course progresses, you can tailor your studies to your career aspirations by choosing from a selection of optional modules.

In your final year, you have the opportunity to put your knowledge into practice by completing an in-depth, independent research project or dissertation. This gives you the chance to further develop vital employability skills in areas of research, time management and critical thinking.