Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Human Resources and Business Management (with integrated placement year)

at Aston University United Kingdom

Understand the world and how to change it. Whether you want to run your own business, succeed in a global organization, or make a difference in society through social enterprise, Business and Sociology could be for you.

What you’ll learn
You will establish foundations in sociological approaches to gender, race, class, and sexuality before more complex issues between science and race, reproductive politics, corporate power, climate change, aging, religion, and media power.

You’ll study the theories, principles, and underlying concepts of the main functions of management, equipped with a strong understanding of business models and processes, all brought to life with real-world examples and case studies. You’ll examine how strategic decision-making within organizations takes place, and develop the ability to recognize and analyze the economic, technical, financial, social, and organizational parameters within which modern managers make decisions. 

By choosing Neuroscience at Aston University, Birmingham, you’ll study with leading academics to ask the big questions about our brains, and what happens to the nervous system when people have neurological, psychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorders.

Neuroscientists study the development and function of the nervous system. This includes the brain, spinal cord, and nerve cells throughout the body. They investigate what happens when people have disorders by focusing on the brain and its impact on behaviour and cognitive functions.

This interdisciplinary science liaises closely with other disciplines such as mathematics, linguistics, engineering, computer science, chemistry, philosophy, psychology and medicine.

If you answered yes and would like to gain the knowledge and experience you need for a career in product design, alongside a range of marketing, management and business skills, this course could be for you.

Our design courses are stimulating, relevant, challenging and rewarding and you’ll benefit from practical, hands-on experience throughout your course. We work with a number of practicing designers so you’ll have the opportunity to work on live projects, ensuring your products are technically and commercially feasible, while also being environmentally responsible.

This course will ensure you develop a range of industry-ready skills, preparing you for whatever future you have in mind, whether that’s in-house design or setting up your own business.

What you’ll learn

In the first year you’ll get a grounding in product design principles and an understanding of how design can affect the profitability of a business.

In the second and final year you will take a common core of design modules to support your projects, integrating your design specialism with the core aspects of product design. You’ll also continue to develop skills that are relevant to your future career, whichever path you choose to take, including presentations and team working. Your final year will culminate in the opportunity to showcase your project work at the Aston Inspired final year design show.

We teach using a hands-on framework called CDIO - Conceive, Design, Implement, Operate – supported by 50 of the world’s top technical institutions. This enables you to apply real-world skills as you learn, enabling you to maximise your learning. You’ll do your learning in our state-of-the-art facilities, which include advanced 3D printing facilitates and a dedicated design studio with specialist equipment designed just for you.

Stand out from the crowd and kick-start your career in marketing on our MSc Strategic Marketing Management. Learn the core concepts, discover how to develop and deliver successful strategy and explore specific areas, such as brand management or consumer behavior including their aspects.

If you’re looking to stand out from the crowd and kick-start your career in Marketing, our MSc Strategic Marketing Management is the course for you. You’ll gain the knowledge and develop the skills you need to become a successful, well-rounded marketing professional. Learn the core concepts, discover how to develop and deliver successful strategies and explore specific areas of marketing, such as digital and brand management.

This course will provide you with detailed knowledge and understanding of one of the most exciting and creative areas of business. By the end of your studies, you will have gained advanced skills which will enable you to fulfill a variety of marketing roles across a wide range of organizations.

The Aston MBA will encourage you to think like an entrepreneurial leader from the start, challenging you at every stage, to personally and professionally develop, through a highly practical, experiential approach to learning.

This is not just a course. This is a new perspective to enhance your future career.

You will approach complex challenges through real-world business problems that you will be tasked with solving. You will think like a business leader, working through challenges by understanding how different functions interact in order to identify solutions for both big and small organisations.

This means, you will cover a broad range of business topics through a hands-on learning experience, equipping yourself with an extensive understanding of how businesses operate in today’s fiercely competitive global commercial environment.

You will discover cutting-edge leadership concepts and frameworks, and put them into practice with applied exercises and real-life business projects. You will develop your ability to inspire and lead enterprises, and be a force for positive change within organisations.

Working independently as well as part of a team, you will identify where your skills need to develop in order for you to personally and professionally develop. You will be exposed to team coaching principles, developing your own personal development plan, as well as have plenty of opportunities to network with, and hear from, industry leaders.

Explore English language and literature, how they work in society and their role in the world today, and develop your communication and analytical skills by studying a BSc (Hons) English Language and Literature degree course at Aston University.

What you’ll learn
As an English language student at Aston, you’ll gain theoretical knowledge and understanding of the English language, along with an exploration of social processes, organisational dynamics and inter-group relationships.

You’ll learn from world-leading academics with cutting-edge research and teaching experience in fields such as ethnic and gender equalities, global change, theories of social change, forensic linguistics, language, gender and teaching English to speakers of other languages.

On the literature strand of the course, you’ll get a broad introduction to literary genres and periods from the seventeenth century to the present day, and consider all literature’s different manifestations, from graffiti and blogging to poetry, novels and street theatre.

You’ll study literacy as a social practice and will explore how and why people read and write at all levels of society. We will equip you to critically engage with a variety of texts across literary genres and periods, and you’ll be able to develop your skills as a writer through our creative writing module.

In the third year of your course, you’ll spend a year on placement with a company, working as a teaching assistant in a school or studying at one of our partner universities - you might even choose to combine two of these options, adding further value to your degree, and in your second year we’ll make sure you’re ready to get the most from this opportunity.

Study a BSc (Hons) Sociology and English Language degree course at Aston University to explore the English language, how it works in society and its role in the world today and learn about issues and policies affecting the world.

What you’ll learn
Our Sociology and English Language course will provide you with an in-depth understanding of social processes, inequalities, organizational dynamics, and inter-group relationships. To understand how these issues perpetuate existing inequalities and unequal life chances, we analyze how politics is intertwined with the profit-making aims pursued by big corporations and how their combined interests dominate our social imaginations.

Sociology will equip you with the knowledge and analytical skills that will enable you to think critically and work independently. This includes how to design a research project, collect empirical data, handle complex datasets (e.g., through applying coding techniques) and, most importantly, develop an advanced analytical mindset. This training will be essential for your final-year dissertation during which you will carry out your own individual research project. This experience will provide you with a skill set that is highly desired in a wide range of industries and areas of work.

A Business Management and English Language degree from Aston gives you the chance to combine in-demand commercial and leadership skills, alongside theoretical knowledge and understanding of the English language, how it works in business, and its role in the workplace.

What you’ll learn
You will be taught by lecturers who are internationally recognized researchers in fields such as leadership communication, marketing, economic development, multi-national enterprises, forensic linguistics, language and gender, and TESOL.

With a professional placement year as one of its key features, the program is geared towards increasing your employability by providing you with the knowledge and skills required of professionals working in the public, private and voluntary sectors.

Marketing influences organisational success, from business growth to behavioural change. Understand the core concepts of marketing theory and develop the skills and experience to apply them.

What you’ll learn
Whether you’re interested in a career in international marketing, within social media strategy or as a market analyst, our highly ranked BSc Marketing course (15th in the UK, Complete University Guide, 2020) will develop problem-solving and transferable skills that will support a breadth of career paths.

Your first year is designed to equip you with a broad knowledge of marketing, giving you a strong foundation from which you can identify the areas aligned to marketing that interest you most. Throughout your studies, you’ll have opportunities to work with local companies and specialists on ‘live’ marketing projects, as well as undertaking an integrated placement year.

You will have more freedom and take ownership of your marketing degree in the final year, having experienced both theoretical, applied and practical aspects of the subject, with more module choice to tailor your studies to your interests and specialist areas.

If your ambition is to help shape the future development of towns and cities, our Construction Project Management course will set you on the right path.

What you’ll learn
During the course of the programme you will gain the necessary skills to develop a challenging and fulfilling career in the construction industry. You will gain technical knowledge around materials and building processes as well as specialist modules including health, safety and environmental management. 
 
After your first year, your studies will centre on the construction process as well as learning about management, economics, logistics, finance and decision-making, all of which are required by professional construction and project managers. 

Our Construction Project Management programme, part of the civil engineering and infrastructure cluster here at Aston, examines the societal, economic and operational issues related to the construction industry. The particular focus is on developing the skills and experience you need to deliver high quality construction projects safely, on time and on budget. 
 
These skills are in high demand and you’ll be able to effectively and confidently contribute to the future development of our built environment.