By Business & Politics Editor Lucas Spicer.
DCU Business School is launching new MSc programmes in economics, but the more interesting question is not whether they exist. It is what they are trying to change.
Rather than offering economics as a purely academic subject, the new programmes are being pitched as a mix of rigorous economics and practical skills that students can actually use after university.
Professor Rob Gillanders, Chair of the programmes, says they are designed for “ambitious graduates from economics, business, mathematics, statistics, engineering, and other quantitatively oriented disciplines”.
He says the goal is to combine “rigorous economics training with applied skills in analytics, programming, strategic thinking, and consulting-style problem solving”.
That is a very different pitch from the old image of economics, students confined to lecture halls, diagrams, and theory-heavy debate.
That shift matters, because economics still sits behind a lot of the issues students hear about every day, whether they study business or not. Housing, inflation, inequality, productivity, regulation, sustainability, and growth are all economic questions as much as political ones.
In this context, a postgraduate course in economics is not just about learning models. It is about learning how to make sense of the forces shaping daily life, business decisions, and public policy. This is the wider case DCU seems to be making with these new programmes.
One of the standout elements is the international pathway through QTEM. For readers outside Business, QTEM stands for Quantitative Techniques for Economics and Management. It is an international network that brings together universities, students, and corporate partners around quantitative training.
In practice, that means students combine advanced quantitative study with international experience and industry exposure, rather than simply completing a standard classroom-based master’s.
According to DCU and QTEM, students on that pathway would complete an exchange semester at a partner university, take part in the QTEM Global Business Analytics Challenge, and complete a quantitative internship.
The appeal is fairly obvious; students could graduate not only with a DCU master’s qualification, but also with a separate QTEM certificate that signals international and analytical experience.
For anyone considering careers in economics, analytics, consulting, finance, or policy, this gives the programme a more global and applied edge.
What makes these programmes interesting is that they seem built around a problem many students already recognise. Degrees are often treated as one of two things: intellectually interesting or professionally useful.
DCU’s new economics MScs are clearly trying to be both. If they work as intended, they will not just produce graduates who understand economics. They will produce graduates who can use it.
Image Credit: DCU Business School