Postgraduate online short courses

Our postgraduate short courses are designed to help you quickly develop the specialist skills to support your professional development and take your career forward.

Fast-track your learning experience

By choosing to study with us, you will be joining one of the world’s most prestigious universities, with full access to our renowned lecturers and thriving global community of students. As well as being acknowledged globally for our academic performance, we are the second-most-targeted university by the UK’s top employers (2020).² The School of Government, which runs the courses, was also recently awarded a Bronze Athena SWAN for Equality and Diversity (2020).³

The School draws on insights from the Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV), an academic department for research and teaching on local governance and strategic public management. These insights are key to understanding the public service practices, strategies and global perspectives necessary to effect positive change and expand your career opportunities in public service.

Courses cover everything from leadership and performance management to managing public money and public service governance. Each course is designed to hone the specialist skills you need to support your career goals and continuing professional development (CPD). This makes it perfect for professionals who are unable to commit to a long-term programme of study.

At the end of the course, you will receive a postgraduate micro-credential certificate worth 10 credits, and a transcript highlighting your new credential. You can use these credits to apply for advanced entry to the University of Birmingham’s full Online Masters of Public Administration (MPA) qualification.

Rather than trying to replicate the campus experience, our online short courses are built from the ground up, taking on board the latest technology to create unique and immersive student experiences.

As well as promising the convenience of 100% online learning, our online learning environment offers a variety of interactive elements to bring the content to life. These include live lectures, discussion forums, group activities and flipped learning exercises.

The online learning environment is not only a means to access the course content, it’s an opportunity to connect directly with expert lecturers and like-minded professionals.

References:

1. UNKNOWN (2019) World University Rankings. QS Top Universities [online] Available at: https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2020 [Accessed 12.02.2020]
2. Updated 11^th February 2020. Country names categorised using information provided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) [online] Available at: <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/country-names/country-names-the-permanent-committee-on-geographical-names-for-british-official-use> [Accessed 11.02.2020]
3. UNKNOWN (2020) The School of Government receives Athena SWAN accreditation [online] Available at: <https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/government/news/school-wide/2020/athena-swan.aspx> [Accessed 21.02.2020]