Master's programs
Online
Part Time
Regular fees: 4340 GBP
International Fees : 6340 GBP
Part-time home/EU students: £4340 pa
Full-time home/EU students: £8680 pa
Part-time international students: £6340 pa
Full-time international students: £12680 pa
Students are charged a tuition fee in each year of their programme. Tuition fees for students continuing on their programme in following years may be subject to annual inflationary increases. For more information, please see the College Fees Policy.
This specialist conversion course fills a critical gap in the market for postgraduate training in economics. If you have an undergraduate degree in another subject area but wish to switch to economics, this course will help you do that - without requiring you to sign up to a full undergraduate degree.
You do not need any prior training in the subject. The programme will give you a thorough grounding in the fundamental ideas and methods of modern economics, and you will learn to apply economic reasoning to practical problems. Crucially, you will also develop the necessary mathematical and statistical toolkit for studying economics. This rigorous and intensive training, spread over one or two years, will enable you to compete on equal terms with students graduating with undergraduate degrees in economics.
We now also offer the Graduate Diploma in Economics through online study, supported by handouts and video recording of classroom lectures via our online platform, Moodle. The course structure and assessment methods are identical to those for students who take the course face-to-face, with written examinations either in Birkbeck, or, by arrangement, at a wide range of sites throughout the world.
To succeed as an online student, you must be well organised, highly motivated and proactive in tracking the material. Access to your instructors is the main asset we offer, so you should be ready to actively maintain contact with your lecturers and class teachers via email or Skype.
The Graduate Diploma is an undergraduate-level qualification. Upon completing the programme, a significant proportion of students exit directly to the job market. Other students use this programme as a preparation for an MSc in economics or related disciplines.
The one-year full-time route offers rapid progression to a high degree of economic literacy and has been specifically designed for people working full-time; students who prefer to spread the course over a longer period should apply for the two-year part-time route which has a lighter workload.
HIGHLIGHTS
- This is an ideal conversion programme if you have a degree in another subject and need the skills of an economics graduate in your work, or want to study economics at Master's level. (Many of our students require a level of economic knowledge in their jobs that is usually acquired at an undergraduate level, as they work for City institutions, the Bank of England, government departments and economic regulators.)
- Our September pre-sessional courses will provide you with an accelerated revision of core mathematics skills, as they start at - roughly - GCSE level, but progress very rapidly to more advanced techniques.
- All modules on the programme are designed carefully around targeted, accelerated learning, in contrast to conversion courses in other universities that simply offer modules that are already part of other undergraduate programmes.
- You can choose to study this course by distance learning, as a purely online course. See a short video to give you an idea of what to expect.
- We aim to video record all lectures, and all course materials are made available online, so you can access them when you need them.
- In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), more than half of our research outputs in Economics were ranked world-leading or internationally excellent.