50 out of 75 places in new business degree to be reserved for non-EU students

newsPlans are being made for a bachelor in business studies (BBS) to become available from the 2016-7 academic year, Trinity News has learned. The new undergraduate degree will contain many of the same modules as the current BESS (business, economics and social studies) programme but with fewer electives. There will also be core modules on the topics of innovation and entrepreneurship.

BESS is currently the only route through which one can graduate with a single honours degree in business. However, modules from all four subjects are mandatory for the first year and students are only able to fully specialise in business, the second most popular speciality in BESS, from third year.

BBS will have a different CAO code to BESS but students choosing to pursue single-honours business through BESS will be awarded the same qualification as students choosing the new direct entry option, Mary-Lee Rhodes, the director of undergraduate teaching and learning for the School of Business, told Trinity News.

She added: “We have created the direct entry option largely due to student and graduate feedback that suggests there are a significant number of students that know they want to do business from the outset. This new course will allow us to tailor the first two years of modules to the needs and interests of these students while maintaining Trinity’s commitment to building general management skills embedded in a broad understanding of the social sciences.”

75 students will be admitted to BSS in its first year, with 50 places being reserved for non-EU applicants. “Currently we have over 1,000 undergraduates pursuing business and business-related degrees and this direct-entry programme will add approximately 300 new students once it reaches capacity,” Rhodes told Trinity News. “Given the current low number of international students, we would expect that the new programme will bring us to roughly 25% international students as a proportion of our student body overall – which we believe can enhance the quality of the learning experience and the network of our graduates in their future career.”

The proposal to introduce a new bachelor of business studies was first put to the Undergraduate Studies Committee on November 25th and accepted at a meeting of the University Council on January 14th. In a statement to Trinity News, Dr Gillian Martin, the dean of undergraduate studies, said it is “envisaged that [the course] will have its first entrants in 2016-17.” It is expected that the number of business undergraduates in Trinity will rise from 600 to 900 with an increase in revenue from €3.6m to €6m within four years of the programme’s launch.