Postgraduate qualifications

We offer a range of postgraduate qualifications, and a variety of ways to study, including full-time, part-time, online, and the option to start in January. Top up your professional qualifications, retrain, challenge yourself, discover something new or enhance your skill set. Whatever your motivation for studying, we have a course that will suit you.

Postgraduate qualifications

Explore the wide ranging types of postgraduate degrees available to best advance your career and fit into your life.


Most of our postgraduate students undertake a taught course – usually a masters but sometimes a postgraduate certificate or postgraduate diploma. Unlike research degrees, taught courses include tutor-led sessions with groups of students (lectures, seminars, tutorials and if relevant, laboratory work). Most taught courses require you to have an undergraduate degree in the same subject or a similar one, but some allow you to change direction.

Masters degrees

Most of our postgraduate taught courses are masters degrees, which usually consist of three stages:

  • Postgraduate certificate
  • Postgraduate diploma
  • Masters

You need to successfully complete each stage before you can move on to the next. A masters degree usually takes one year of full-time study or up to two years of part-time study.

There are different titles for masters degrees, depending on the subject. Our range of masters degrees include:

  • Master of Arts (MA)
  • Master of Science (MSc)
  • Master of Business Administration (MBA)
  • Master of Laws (LLM)
  • Master of Research (MRes)

Some of our postgraduate taught courses are only available at postgraduate certificate or postgraduate diploma level, including Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), Psychology (Online) and Human Resource Management (CIPD Approved).

If you have a thirst for knowledge and an independent mind, our applied research degrees enable you to delve deeper into a subject, ask challenging questions and help the University make a real and positive impact on the world. 

Find out about the different types of research degrees we offer.


You might be looking for a specialist course that can help you move forward in your profession. We have many courses that can do this. Search our postgraduate courses to find more.

Many of our courses are accredited by professional bodies. This means the course is approved by industry and can sometimes offer you a faster route to becoming a registered or chartered professional in your field. Look for details of accreditations on course pages.

  • Chartered Management Institute (CMI)
  • Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)
  • Institute of Acoustics (IOA)
  • Institute of Measurement and Control (InstMC)
  • British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP)

If you can’t commit to a long programme of study but want to develop your knowledge in a particular topic relevant to your career, browse our short courses and CPD.