BA (Hons) Business Management (Top Up)

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UCAS Code

N194
Start Date

September
Location

Pontypridd
Campus Code

A

Fees

Home students

£9,535*
International students

£15,850*
Full-time fees are per year. Part-time fees are per 20 credits.

Overview
Module Overview
Course Highlights
Entry Requirements
Fees and Funding
How to Apply

This course, combined with its specialism pathways, provides a contemporary business education across various disciplines, equipping you with the skills needed for the ever-evolving labour market and enhancing your business and management abilities.

Career paths

Entrepreneur
Business manager
Management consultant
Project manager
Account executive

Skills taught

Business awareness
Interpersonal skills
Problem solving
Self-management
Entrepreneurial mindset

Course Highlights

Complete a live project

Here you will have an opportunity to research a topic and organisation of your choosing, giving you the opportunity to develop your skills in enquiry.

Choose your own path

There are optional modules or specific paths to choose so you can study the areas that interest you most.

Work with specialists

You will be supported by an experienced team of business specialists who will support you to become your very best self.

Top in Wales

Business Management at USW is top for Teaching Quality in Wales (Guardian University Guide 2025).

Module Overview

You will study a variety of modules designed to enhance your business and management skills over two 12-week terms. The first term will get you up-to-speed with business management theory and you will have the opportunity to tailor your learning to suit your career goals and interests in term two.

Term one

Applied Management
Business Research: Principles and Practice
Business Strategy
Enhancing Academic Success

Term two

In term two, you will complete a Live Management Project along with two of the following optional modules:

Principles of Corporate Finance (optional)
Principles of Accounting (optional)
Excellence in Customer Service (optional)
Business Ethics and Sustainability (optional)
HRM 4.0 and the Future of Work (optional)
Professional Selling and Business Development (optional)
Logistics and Material Management (optional)
Commercial Procurement (optional)
Contemporary Global Leadership (optional)

In the first term, you will complete four core modules designed to strengthen your confidence in business management theory and practical skills.

Applied Management
Develop the knowledge and skills necessary to embark on a career in middle management.

Business Strategy
Gain a holistic and strategic view of organisations and their environments. Explore themes like trading, innovation, and cross-cultural management while learning to analyse global business challenges.

Business Research: Principles and Practice
Build essential skills and learn about techniques needed to conduct a real investigation into a business problem.

Enhancing Academic Success
This non-credit bearing module is designed to support students to develop their academic and business skills for future employment.

In the second term, you will complete a Live Management Project along with two optional modules.

Live Management Project (specified)
Develop your professional business management skills as you draw on your learnings and apply them in a live project activity alongside a supervising tutor.

Principles of Corporate Finance (optional)
Develop a critical awareness of the theories and techniques of corporate finance.

Principles of Accounting (optional)
You’ll explore the fundamental principles of financial accounting, financial reporting and management accounting in a business management context.

Excellence in Customer Service (optional)
Understand the importance of customer service excellence, the contemporary issues affecting customers and develop the skills to aid analysis of customer service requirements.

Business Ethics and Sustainability (optional)
You will develop your critical understanding of sustainable business issues and how they can be managed, promoted and developed in a business context.

HRM 4.0 and the Future of Work (optional)
Draw on your existing knowledge of HR whilst developing a deeper understanding of current issues and potential future changes to the profession.

Professional Selling and Business Development (optional)
Develop key skills in professional selling and sales management while gaining insights into marketing, innovation and buyer behaviours.

Logistics and Material Management (optional)
Examine techniques and strategies for planning, organising and managing the overall logistics process including the functional areas of forecasting, inventory management and customer service.

Commercial Procurement (optional)
You will explore the theory and practical application that underpins the processes involved in formation of commercial agreements and relationships with external organisations.

Contemporary Global Leadership (optional)
This module provides aspiring managers with insights into leadership in a global context. You will enhance your understanding of the challenges of leading a diverse, modern workforce and develop key people management skills.

Course Highlights

How you’ll learn

Our business and management top up course is broken into two 12-week terms. You will learn through interactive in-person teaching sessions in the form of lectures and workshops that are based on active learning techniques and allow for plenty of collaboration and discussion.

Teaching is based on real scenarios and recent case studies and students will have the opportunity to work with businesses as part of various modules. By taking this approach, students can stay up to date with current trends and business developments as well as building confidence and skills for the world of work.

A range of methods will be used for assessment, including presentations, essays, portfolios, examination and in-class tests.

Teaching staff

Our teaching staff are dedicated to creating a supportive, student-centred learning environment and are all qualified academics with experience working in many sectors including retail, marketing, accounting and finance, logistics and supply chain, strategy, leadership and management. Their backgrounds in a range of environments give students an insight into various industries and help connect theory to practice.

Placements and work experience

There is an opportunity for students to engage with virtual internships alongside their studies allowing them to collaborate with a variety of businesses and help them to tackle their real-world challenges. These are extra-curricular opportunities for students and are a great opportunity to develop valuable practical skills and experience for a CV.

Facilities

As a business and management student, you’ll be studying at our Treforest campus in the heart of the South Wales Valleys. We have a range of bookable learning and studying environments within the business school that students use for collaboration and working. Students can also benefit from our dedicated startup incubator, Start-Up Stiwdio, which has been designed to help develop and grow new business ideas. Students with a passion for entrepreneurship can get advice on how to start their own businesses and grow their network through various events.

Careers and Employability

Graduate Careers

Many graduates start their own businesses as a result of studying this course whilst others find themselves in a range of careers from business managers or entrepreneurs to teachers. Other students go on to complete further study in the form of master’s degrees and other higher education qualifications.

Our careers service team is dedicated to helping you find relevant placements for work experience or a job after graduation. We also have an employability development team who runs a programme called Grad Edge, and an enterprise team focused on new business ideas and entrepreneurship.

Careers support

You’ll have access to advice from our careers and employability service throughout your studies and when you graduate. This includes one-to-one appointments with faculty-based career advisers either in person or virtually over Skype or email. We also have online resources to help explore career options and ensure you present yourself well to employers. These include psychometric tests, career assessments, a CV builder, an interview simulator, and application help. We also have over 2,000 registered employers targeting business graduates, so we’ll sign you up to receive weekly email alerts for jobs that match your interests too.

Industry partners

Our teaching staff have incredible links with industry, allowing you to work with businesses on live briefs and case-studies as part of your studies. This collaboration allows students to gain an insight into the challenges that businesses face and develop practical skills that employers value by applying your classroom learning to real-world scenarios.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

Typical qualification requirements:

Successful completion of a HND in Business Studies or Business & Accounting, a Foundation Degree in Business Studies, Service Sector Management or Retail Management, or an equivalent qualification e.g. a Diploma in Higher Education or ILM Leadership and Management (Level 5).

Consideration will be made on an individual basis for alternative qualifications and/or relevant experience providing students can demonstrate sufficient related knowledge and understanding to equip them for level 6 study in a business discipline. Applicants will need to demonstrate 240 credits (or equivalent) and the University’s Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) policy may feature in the decision to offer a place on the course. Relevant experience, qualifications and knowledge should be referenced in the Applicant’s personal statement

How to apply

International applications welcomed:

We welcome international applications with equivalent qualifications of our entry requirements. For more details related to your country of residence, please view our dedicated country pages.

English language requirements

International applicants will need to have achieved an overall of IELTS 6.0 with a minimum of 5.5 in each component/TOEFL 72 overall and a minimum of 18 in reading, 17 in listening, 20 in speaking and 17 in writing or equivalent.

Equivalents can be located on our English Language pages.

If you have previously studied through the medium of English, IELTS might not be required, please visit our country specific page for further details. If your country is not featured, please contact us.

If you do not meet the English entry criteria, please visit our Pre-Sessional course pages.

Contextual offers

We may make you a lower offer based on a range of factors, including your background (where you live and the school or college that you attended, for example), your experiences and individual circumstances (as a care leaver, for example). This is referred to as a contextual offer, and we receive data from UCAS to support us in making these decisions.

USW prides itself on its student experience and we support our students to achieve their goals and become a successful graduate. This approach helps us to support students who have the potential to succeed and who may have faced barriers that make it more difficult to access university.

Contextual Admissions Policy

Fees and Funding

UK Full-time Fee

£9,535

per year*

International Full-time Fee

£15,850

per year*

Further Information

Studying at university is one of the most significant investments you'll ever make. Whilst you’re studying, you’ll have two main financial obligations – tuition fees and living costs. There’s lots of financial help available from the University of South Wales and external funding sources, that may provide loans (which have to be paid back) and grants, scholarships and bursaries (that don't).

*Full-time fees are per year. Part-time fees are per 20 credits. Once enrolled, the fee is anticipated to remain at the same rate throughout the duration of your study on this course except as described below.

Please be aware that we may increase the maximum fee for home students on full-time undergraduate courses only where the Welsh Government increases the permitted level of inflation of fees. Fees for all students (including part-time, postgraduate and international students) may be amended in accordance with our applicable Fees and Debt Management Policy. We will ensure that students are given clear, intelligible, unambiguous and timely information about our courses and costs in good time, ahead of the next academic year.

Fees and Funding Scholarships and Bursaries Cost of Living Support

Additional Costs

As a student of USW, you’ll have access to lots of free resources to support your study and learning, such as textbooks, publications, online journals, laptops, and plenty of remote-access resources. Whilst in most cases these resources are more than sufficient in supporting you with completing your course, additional costs, both obligatory and optional, may be required or requested for the likes of travel, memberships, experience days, stationery, printing, or equipment.

The University has computers available on campus and laptops for loan. However, it is highly recommended that you have your own personal laptop, which will be capable of running Microsoft Office 365. As a student you will be able to download a free copy of any software relevant to the course.

Cost: Up to £250

At USW, we regularly review our courses in response to changing patterns of employment and skills demand to ensure we offer learning designed to reflect today’s student needs and tomorrow’s employer demands.

If during a review process course content is significantly changed, we’ll write to inform you and talk you through the changes for the coming year. But whatever the outcome, we aim to equip our students with the skillset and the mindset to succeed whatever tomorrow may bring. Your future, future-proofed.

How to apply

All applications for full-time undergraduate courses or foundation degrees should be made via UCAS. Take the next step: Apply through UCAS. You can apply to us directly for all part-time undergraduate courses, if you’re seeking advanced entry or you’re an international student. To apply directly, please choose the application form below for your preferred start date and mode of study (full-time or part-time.)

Advanced entry

If you already have a relevant qualification or experience related to the course you're applying for, you may be eligible to start at a later stage of the course. For example, students from partner colleges can ‘top up’ their qualifications to a degree by joining us in Year Two or Year Three of a course. This process is known as ‘advanced entry’, you can apply directly to the University for 'advanced entry' using the application forms provided above.

International admissions

International applicants can apply to us directly. If the University has an in-country team in your region, your application will be assigned to them for assistance.

Life at USW

Halls are a big part of your student experience and there’s accommodation at all three of our locations. If you don’t want to live near the campus, there are great transport links to keep you connected.