Aston University - Aston Business School

Aston Business School (ABS) is one of the largest business schools in Europe and is triple accredited (first UK business school to be awarded the prestigious EQUIS accreditation, in 1999). It is part of Aston University, Birmingham, England.

ABS started life in 1947 as The Department of Industrial Administration at the Birmingham Central Technical College (now Aston University). In 1972, the department was merged with the Graduate Centre of Management Studies to become the Management Centre and to offer degrees at all levels – its first MBA was awarded in 1979. The school gained its current name in 1988 and, in 2006, extended its original premises in the Nelson Building.

Undergraduate courses are available across the disciplines of: accounting and finance; business computing and IT; business and management; economics and management; finance; human resource management; international business and economics; international business and management; international business and modern languages (French / German / Spanish / Mandarin Chinese); LLB law; LLB law with management; marketing and the foundation programme in business and international foundation programme in business.

Postgraduate options include Aston’s MBA that spans a number of formats: full time, online, executive MBA, executive apprenticeship MBA and management of manufacturing MBA. Meanwhile master's courses range over: business, management and analytics; international business entrepreneurship; finance, economics and accounting; marketing and HR, business and organisation studies.

Other courses include a pre-master's course, an executive doctorate DBA, the PhD and a law school offering LLB law, LLB law with management and LLM international commercial law.

The main areas of research at Aston are: accounting; law; economics, finance and entrepreneurship; marketing and strategy; operations and information management, and work and organisational psychology. Meanwhile, ABS has set up six research centres to respond to emerging trends: Aston Centre for Higher Education Learning and Management (HELM); Aston Centre for Human Resources (ACHR); Aston Centre for Research into International Business (ACRIB);
Centre for performance Measurement and Management (CEPMMA); El Shaarani Centre for Islamic Business and Finance (IHSE) and Aston Centre for Servitization Research and Practice.

In terms of liaison with business, Aston Business School works with local, national and international companies on strategy via the school’s research findings. It does this through a number of channels including Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, bespoke research projects, MBA Business Consultancy Projects and MSc research projects.

The school has been awarded a Small Business Charter Gold Award for its role in helping to support enterprise, only one of three business schools in the UK to receive that honour.

ABS and its courses have received numerous high rankings from various organisations including the Financial Times, Eduniversal, The Economist, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), the Complete University Guide and so on.