Lifelong learning
AMBS has launched a range of short business courses.
Let’s say you’re a manager in your mid-30s leading a small but highly effective sales team. It is a decade since you completed your undergraduate degree, and perhaps a Masters.
Since then, you have poured all your energies into building your business career.
But at the back of your mind you’re conscious that the world around you has moved on and is changing very fast. Every week you hear stories about how digital transformation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are going to change our working and personal lives. You worry about missing the boat. About missing out on those key ingredients of knowledge that could help you and your business perform better.
Yet over the last 10 years you also haven’t set foot in a business school or communicated much with thought-leading management educators and researchers. You decide it’s time to act.
Lifelong learning
This is precisely the kind of scenario that is driving a whole new range of short business courses launching at AMBS. The core aim of these courses is to provide professionals with a real opportunity to upskill in depth, taking on board bite-sized chunks of learning and yet still walking away with a qualification in the form of a professional certificate.
And to upskill in breadth too, as the new courses go far beyond the usual professional development areas of leadership and management into subjects such as digital transformation, data and AI, digital marketing and finance.
A further aim of our courses is to become relevant to a new global audience. We know from our own market research that the majority of delegates will come from overseas, with around a fifth signing up from the UK.
A further aim of our programmes is to become relevant to a new global audience.
Educational offer
The courses are also about attracting people back to university who left several years ago and who want to continue their education in a meaningful and immediately applicable way.
Driven by the social, economic and technological changes that the world is going through, there is a growing need for lifelong learning among business leaders. However, not many UK universities offer courses that require no academic experience and we believe this gives us an opportunity to be a role model.
There are substantial benefits for our academics too. Through our short courses, professional development becomes more accessible to a range of academic colleagues as the courses provide opportunities for them to communicate their expertise to business professionals across many disciplinary areas.
Short Business Courses
Lead brilliantly in an ever-shifting landscape, with a short business course at AMBS.
The courses are also about attracting people back to university who left several years ago and who want to continue their education in a meaningful way.
Thought leadership
In my personal view, these courses also demonstrate a particular form of thought leadership in business education, as the content is highly focused and geared towards people who are already managing business operations. They will be exciting and dynamic individuals with years of professional experience, and they will not hesitate to call us out if we are not providing value on their chosen topic of instruction. Ultimately, we have to offer something that really resonates with individuals, their companies and organisations.
Because these courses are short (typically lasting four days) and can be combined with each other in different ways, it is also an extremely flexible way of knowledge acquisition. Further, as the courses are ‘open’, they provide an alternative for companies not wanting to go down the customised programme route. Instead, a firm can send individual staff, or a small group, to AMBS on particular topics of interest. And, of course, individuals can sign up on their own account and invest in themselves to advance their careers.
The fact that delegates will be visiting in person is important too. It is worth stressing that the majority of our portfolio of short courses will be face to face. We see tremendous value in that, not least as it affords lively peer-to-peer interaction and networking opportunities.
CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition 2023
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Manchester offering
Although, as I have mentioned, many delegates will be coming from overseas, this is also an opportunity for business leaders across the North to join us on campus too. At the moment, similar courses are only run by business schools in the south of England, so there is a real opportunity for Manchester in terms of its central geographic location to champion our unique ‘original thinking applied’ ethos.
Devised by industry-leading academics, our short business courses aim to equip future leaders with the professional skills needed to lead businesses.
