Accelerate your career with an online business degree

It’s never too late to push yourself to achieve more in life. Whether you’re a fresh graduate or have been working for 20 years, further education promises fresh opportunities for your career. There’s no such thing as too much learning or too much education, especially as today’s business challenges continue to evolve. Global employers fully recognize this fact, and accordingly reward staff who take the initiative to educate themselves with positions of influence.

If you hunger for that sort of success, it’s time to consider an advanced degree in business. Why business? Because it’s always relevant – business skills are applicable across all industries; employers are looking for candidates who are adept in management, can grasp consumer trends and market conditions, and show a commitment to the company’s bottom line. Having an advanced business degree gives you a whole host of new options within and outside your company. It could be the big break that you’re waiting for.

And thanks to the Internet revolution, it’s easier than ever to give your career a solid boost. Online learning programs allow you to earn a business degree without sacrificing your time, and most importantly, your job.

It’s normal to feel hesitant about taking a break from your job to go back to full-time study. It’s not a nice feeling to think your current career may be in jeopardy. After all, you may miss out on a crucial promotion while you’re away, or your employer may hire someone to replace you. Also, you won’t be paid a regular salary while you’re studying. Fortunately, online learning frees you from those concerns, allowing you to advance your career while advancing your studies. So in a sense, you save time by not losing any in the real working world.

Furthermore, practice makes perfect. You can immediately put what you’ve learnt online into practice at your workplace. And you can draw upon your workplace experiences when engaging in online discussions and completing assignments. This symbiotic mix ensures you’re never stuck in a bubble (often the case in many traditional universities), but are equally informed by theory and practice.

Also, consider how much you’d save by studying business online. You can rule out accommodation and travel costs. The commute time is non-existent. You don’t have to deal with immigration or complicated paperwork. You have all the benefits of overseas study without the onerous drawbacks. If you plan to start building your business, money you might otherwise have spent on a costly overseas education can be put towards that instead.

But wait a minute, you might say – what’s the catch? After all, aren’t online business degrees less prestigious than ones obtained through traditional study? Whilst that may have been true in the past, these days more and more of the world’s most prestigious universities are turning to the Internet as a medium of instruction.

The University of Birmingham, for example, through its well-regarded Birmingham Business School, offers online business programs that award exactly the same certificates as those that can be earned on campus, meaning that for employers around the world, there’s simply no difference between them.

As a proud member of the Russell Group, which is made up of some of the top universities in the UK, the University of Birmingham is certainly no academic slouch. QS World University Rankings placed Birmingham as the 76th best university in the world, and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University World Rankings ranked Birmingham 101 out of 500 universities. And if that’s not enough, the university was recently named University of the Year in both The Times and The Sunday Times.

Birmingham Business School has an Online International Business MSc programme and an Online MBA programme – both should be seriously considered depending on one’s interests and future plans. The former has a strong international focus and emphasizes business operations in a world where borders are effectively being erased. The Online MBA is notably the world’s first and only 100% online MBA to receive full AMBA accreditation.

Students can access video lectures any time and from any device, and can actively participate in interactive assignments. This also conveniently allows them to interact with professors, tutors and peers via the World Wide Web.

But Birmingham’s online programmes are not merely carbon copies of their campus counterparts. According to Ian Myatt, Director of Educational Enterprise at the University of Birmingham, “[The Online MBA] is a fresh and new product that draws from Birmingham’s great tradition. This is not a campus-based course that we’ve just put online; we’ve built this from the ground up, taking on board the current online environment and latest technology that we have available.”

Birmingham’s online programmes have been well-received thus far. Ceridwen Scerri, a student from Malta, had this to say about Birmingham’s Online MBA: “It’s made me much more competitive and goal-orientated, it’s benefited my resume, it’s increased the trust my superiors have in me and I’m being given tasks beyond my paygrade.”

If it worked for her, it can work for you. Give yourself a chance. Enrol in an online business programme via Birmingham Business School and accelerate your career. You stand to obtain a full, unabridged degree from a top UK university with little disruption to your current lifestyle and career. The path to success has never been easier.

Find out more about studying online with the University of Birmingham.

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This article is sponsored by Birmingham Business School. Part of the prestigious University of Birmingham, the Business School is well-regarded for its outstanding MBA programmes, which include full-time, executive and distance-learning versions. The school, along with just a handful of others in the world, holds the gold standard of ‘triple-crown’ accreditation from the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), AMBA (Association of MBAs) and EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System). The University of Birmingham is a leader in online learning with a unique global perspective. It was recently named University of the Year in both The Times and The Sunday Times.

Image courtesy of Birmingham Business School.

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