 Hi, welcome to the School of Finance and Management Center for Financial Management Studies. I'm Rick, Dr. Richard Alexander. I convene the Finance and Financial Law programs. And it's a great privilege to be able to go through with you today the various programs that we offer. But before we start with that, I'd like to take you through a brief introduction to Stephens and tell you a bit about Stephens, tell you about SOAS. One small piece of admin, there will be a time for questions at the end, but please at any time if you have a question, use the chat function to send it through, I will be going through the questions at the end, but it may be that there's a particular question somebody has that I may be able to work into the presentation. If you have queries, do by only send them through whenever you're ready. So what makes SOAS so special? Well, several things. First of all, we have particular regional expertise in a fast-changing world. We offer specific expertise in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, but also in a number of our modules in certain other regions as well. And that means that our graduates are particularly competitive in the workplace. Many of our online students are already significant professionals in their fields, but many of them, when they approach us, they say they want to take our programs because our programs will equip them to take the next step up the ladder. SOAS has the largest concentration in Europe of academic staff concerned professionally with Asia, Africa and the Middle East. And our teaching quality is consistently rated the highest level by our students. We are number one in London in the National Student Survey, to put that in context, number one in London means we come above University College London, we come above the LSE, we come above Queen Mary's, we come above King's. And the University of London International Programs, it's organized essentially by the University of London. There are several colleges that provide online graduate programs. We are the biggest one, we provide the largest number of programs at postgraduate level to the University of London International Academy. Our students, you are enthusiastic, you're diverse, you're highly diverse. At one point, our student body represented every country on Earth until one of our online students in North Korea graduated, but we cover every continent on Earth and our students cover most countries within a particular continent. And the SOAS Library, and that would stress that online students have access to the SOAS Library just as much as our own campus students do, is one of only five national research libraries in the United Kingdom. And in terms of numbers, you can see we have 5,000 students studying on campus in Central London and there were 3,000 online distance learning students making 8,500 in total. But these figures are for SOAS, so across SOAS, the online students make up just under 60% of our students However, if you look at particular departments, and certainly the school funds and management, you'll find that the online students make up the majority. There are other departments that don't run online programs. So 3,000 is across the whole of SOAS and the majority of those are in seconds. Our online students, where do they live? Well, the area highlighted on the map, these are the areas of traditional regional focus of SOAS. However, if you look at the bar chart, you'll discover very quickly that our online students are dispersed far more widely. The largest group are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Within that group, the two largest counterparts are in South Africa and Nigeria, but we have others across the African continent. Then a little bit behind comes Europe. Some of them are based at EU institutions. Some of them are based at major banks in Switzerland. Again, let's be found across Europe. After that, the Americas and Asia are pretty similar in numbers and the Middle East and North Africa are a little behind that. But when one considers the Middle East and North Africa in terms of population, you can see just how significant the Middle East is for our online programs. Online students age. Now, this is in contrast to our on-campus students. Most of our on-campus students come to us, start their master's program straight after graduating from undergrad, so they would be in the 20-24 age bracket. As you can see, very few of our online students are. Most of our online students are in their mid-30s to mid-40s and just behind mid-20s to mid-30s. Telling you, as I was mentioning earlier, that most of our online students are already embarked on their careers. Some of them in highly prestigious organizations such as the World Bank, such as the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Reserve Bank of South Africa, but also a range of commercial banks across Europe, the Americas, Nigeria, South Africa, and indeed into Asia. And then 45 to 54 and 55 to 64, some way behind that. So much for us as a whole. What about the center of financial and financial studies? We are dedicated to postgraduate distance learning, online learning programs. We do not run... In South Africa, we do not run undergraduate programs. There are other parts of the University of London that do. We focus on postgraduate distance learning, online learning. We have 20-plus years' experience of teaching it. We are ranked 11th in the UK and 2nd in London in the Guardian University League Tables. And that's the up-to-date ones. That's the 2019 ones. And 4th in the UK for business and management student satisfaction. So what programs do we offer? Well, as you can see on the right, we offer two MOOCs, massive online open courses, but our core programs are in the column on the left. We run master's programs, postgraduate diploma, postgraduate certificate programs. I'll explain in a moment how each of those works in a range of financial management and indeed financial law areas. We're ranging from finance with four specific pathways, banking, economic policy, financial sector management, quantity of finance. Then finance and financial law, international business administration and public financial management, public policy and management. And within finance and financial law, when we get into the postgraduate certificate, we only offer a postgraduate certificate and financial law because, as we should see, the postgraduate certificate consists of only two modules. We do, however, offer a range of specialist postgraduate certificate programs in finance. And again, as we shall see within public policy and management, there are specific, more focused postgraduate certificate programs. So when I say postgraduate diploma, postgraduate certificate, what do I mean by that? Each program is divided into a number of modules. Each module consists of 30 credits. So a Master of Science in MSc consists of six modules because in the credit framework an MSc program carries 180 credits. So six modules of 30 credits. And the minimum length of time you can complete that in is two years because there are full study sessions over the course of the year and you're completing six modules. Whether you get it into exactly two years or whether you take longer, will depend to an extent on when you start. Just as we have four study sessions, we also have four entry points and you see on the slide the application deadlines. But we have one examination session in September October. So two years is minimum. However, all students, however, all students are granted a five-year registration. Whether or not you use that is up to you. Now, one of you has just posted a question why have we changed from an eight-module MSc to a six-module MSc? I'll be coming back to that at the end of the session. Okay, then the postgraduate diploma. At many universities a postgraduate diploma and indeed postgraduate certificate is an exit award. So how does that work? That means if a student takes a Master's program and unfortunately fails part of it rather than have them leave with nothing, they're granted a lower level qualification as an exit award. That is not how serfins does it. Serfins, the postgraduate diploma and the postgraduate certificate is a qualification in its own right. It's not a consolation prize. It is a qualification for which students enroll from the beginning. Why would they do that? They enroll on a postgraduate diploma or graduate certificate for one of two reasons. First one, they already have a good level of expertise. I've already said most of our students are embarked on professional careers. They look at a Master's program and they see there are a number of four modules that they... I've done that. If I do that, I may have taken a previous degree in that. I don't really want to study it again, but I do want to focus in this particular niche area. So a postgraduate diploma consisting of four credit modules, problem six, allows those students to focus on a narrow range of modules and a postgraduate certificate consisting of two modules a narrow range still. Then there's the second group. They've done well in their previous studies. All our students have. However, their previous studies were on campus. That was then. They were on campus under graduate students. They had relatively few commitments or mandatory commitments other than their studies. So all went well. I've never studied online before, but they do understand that online study involves a higher level of self-discipline. Furthermore, they now have a demanding job. They also have three kids and bringing them up is a demanding job in itself. Are they... And some of them ask... Some of them are confident with that and they say, okay, that's why I want to study online or open on campus. Others say, I want to do a Masters, but I don't know if I can handle the demand of an online program alongside my other commitments. So rather than commit to six modules, I'll start off with a few. Maybe a postgraduate certificate, a couple of modules. Let's see how they go. And if they go well, then I can move on to a higher level of program. Our structure allows you to do that if at the end of your postgraduate certificate or indeed postgraduate diploma, you feel comfortable enough for four modules but not six. That's fine. If on completion of the modules, you write to my administrative colleagues and you say, I would like to upgrade to the MSc or you can write on the postgraduate certificate. Maybe you want to upgrade to the postgraduate diploma or straight to the MSc. You write to our administration, you let them know, and then they say, that's fine. Instead of sending you your qualification certificate for your certificate or diploma, what we will do is we will cancel that and we will treat you as though you had taken the higher level of program from the start. In other words, the modules you've already taken are credited towards the program that you switched to. The fee is £1,680 per module and as an example, you saw on an earlier slide the number of our students proportion of the population that we have in the Middle East, equivalent in Emirati Derams, just short of £8,000. Within that structure, the various fields, the MSc finance allows you to deepen your understanding of financial markets, get to know how much financial markets work, banks work. How do they relate to economic performance and you can decide what aspect of all that you want to focus on by choosing one of four measures that we just went through quantitative finance, economic policy, financial sector management and banking. And they enable you to establish the skills you need in order to develop your career in that particular aspect of finance. And the way it works is that on the banking major, you take four core modules and then you take two elective modules and the four core modules are on the screen, corporate finance going through portfolio and fund management, retail, bank and household finance and then if you want to focus on economic policy, again, you take four core modules from the list of six on the screen and then you take two electives. The core modules range from bank and capital markets through to macroeconomic policy, macroeconomic principles, public financial management with a particular focus on revenue. In financial management, again, you take four modules from a list of five, again, bank financial management, you would expect that to be a core module in a major of financial sector management. Further, again, on things like strategy, corporate finance, how do companies finance themselves? How do bank and capital markets work? Finance and the liberal market, what products, what strategies are used internationally in order to operate an international financial institution? And finally, quantitative finance, again, you can see on the screen that we really go deep into quantitative skills, whether it be econometrics or modeling firms or indeed the quantitative principles required in managing different kinds of financial risk. Next, the finance and financial law, MSc, this is the program which I convene. Now, this is a little different from the others because at first glance, it combines two distinct disciplines. It's important that you understand that the finance and financial law, MSc, is not a dual-honours qualification. There are many universities that will offer you a dual-honours qualification in law and economics, law and finance. Many will do that. What we do instead is we offer an integrated program. What we intend is that the law modules inform the finance modules and vice versa. And what is it for? Why would you do this? Some of you might be seeking a career in the international banking sector, others perhaps working for government departments, others perhaps working for a whole secret career with a regulator. Another group you're not looking to work in the financial sector at all. Why are you taking the program? You're taking the program because you aspire to senior management in a different sector. But you understand that senior managers in whatever sector need to have a good understanding of how the financing of their company works. They also have significant legal responsibilities. And so a number of students take the MSc in finance and financial law because although they've never worked in the financial sector and took wish to, they will rise into senior management in another field. To take an example of a student from a few years ago, their entire experience in two very different countries had been in the drinks industry. But now they wanted to apply for a senior management position in a major multinational drinks company. I wouldn't name it, but if I did it would be a name that you would recognize. And so they said I need the finance and the legal skills for finance. So the aim of the finance and financial program is to produce what I sometimes call a new breed of financial professional. Possibly not so new now that we've been running the program for some years. Because if you go into a bank what you'll typically find is that in many departments you will find people with a higher level of financial skills. They're very good at meeting new products or trading them. They understand how the markets work. But if you ask them about the laws and the regulations that govern their industry they'll send you to the compliance but on your way out you'll see the compliance colleagues they'll say but the problem is the people in compliance they do not understand our business. They don't understand our products. The rules are but they don't understand what we're going to do. When you go to the compliance department you find that that's true but they say my colleagues my colleagues on the trading floor if only they had a basic understanding of law and regulation so they don't have to contact me every five minutes. So what these programings to do is to produce a new type of professional with an understanding both of the principles of the financial sector and the laws and regulations governing that sector. So they take three core modules introduction to law and finance and then corporate finance very much a finance model looking at how companies finance themselves and the basic principles of private sector financial relationships. MSC International Business Administration this is what it says on the tin a high quality management qualification which aims to give specialist regional offers. So there are two core modules international business strategy how do you plan a business across borders how do you manage a transnational corporation the management skills for a corporation covering several different countries that they're very different to those for a corporation that only operates in one particular country with one culture and then there are a range of elective modules with a regional focus either on China or on sub Saharan Africa in order to provide the learning that's increasing in demand in the regions of Asia and Africa and some of our students they come out of Asia or sub Saharan Africa you saw the demographic of our students earlier but others they originate from other parts of the world maybe Europe maybe North America maybe Australia they want to take up a management position Asia or sub Saharan Africa and they understand that they don't have they don't have the skills for that they don't they're not equipped to be alert to the cultural issues the different marketing issues and one example that we give is of a Japanese corporation Toyota and they decide they really wanted to develop their marketing channel and so they came up with an idea and what they wanted to do was to show they wanted to show that Toyota is a big powerful international brand however the TV advertisement that they used for that was highly insensitive to a Chinese market the consequence is that the marketing China for Toyota has collapsed recovered a bit since but even now if you go to a major Chinese city you'll see a lot of miss-hands on the road you'll see Korean Hyundai's you'll see VW's you'll see Buick comparatively few Toyotas we teach you some of the core knowledge on the cultures how to be alert to different sensitivities to avoid that sort of thing happening public financial management that covers a wide range and yes within public financial management there are different niches it might be budgeting might be revenue policy which is a polite way of saying taxes reporting audits even public institutions have laws and regulations they have to comply with and so and this applies to anywhere where financial matters take center stage in the public policy decision so we offer core module focusing on macroeconomic policy but the others specific issues public financial management then for public policy and management we appreciate that public policy and management covers a particularly wide area and different students want to study particular aspects of it so what we do is we don't have a division between core and elective modules we offer the full range of modules there on the screen we say pick choose the six modules that are most relevant to what you want to do so how does it work you have you're given a personal tutor who yes you study online but you're allocated a personal tutor for your specific module in your specific section and the start the tutor student ratio is 1 to 10 you will not we will not allow it to happen that you are sharing a tutor with 50 other students and at the same time you're trying to take this module online from a computer late at night in your home we aim for 1 to 10 ratio we do not allow the ratio to go above 1 to 15 1 to 15 is maximum we give you as well as the study materials that we provide to you we also give you access to the online lives both of the University of London centrally and specifically of Salis we give you a structured study schedule each week each week of the first four weeks you study one unit you're given a module that consists of eight units so weeks 1 to 4 you study one unit a week then week 5 you work on your first assignment then 6, 7, 8, 9 the next four modules and then you have another week at the end to work on your assignments the course units are specially written for our programmes they're not just taken off the pack we ask you to write two assignments of 2,500 words each over the course of your study and there's a three hour written examination again for each module that you take in September, October and we provide you with course materials and readings including journal articles we provide these online textbooks are sent to you particularly if an electronic version of the textbook doesn't exist we send that out to you the application process is similarly when you submit your application online you get a conditional offer within 10 days the conditional means we then ask you to send proof of the core information you provided in your application in particular your previous degree if you've taken several degrees of qualifications before you'll typically be asked for one of them but you may be asked for more than one once the documentation is provided and we ask for certified copies of certificates not just stamp copies once they're provided then the conditional offer becomes unconditional entry requirements minimum first degree with good grades first degree means a bachelor's good grades means equivalent to a UK to one or up to second class onwards so if you started in the system aligned to the US then we're looking for cumulative GPA of 3.3 if you started in China we're looking for an average GPA of 18 we will also look at relevant professional qualifications we'll also look at relevant professional experience however although most of our students do have professional qualifications and or significant work experience it's not an absolute requirement if you're at the beginning of your career do please apply to us we also run a range of on-campus programs and you will see a considerable alignment between the distance learning one now online learning programs that I went through and the programs that we provide on campus that leaves us for questions now the first question that came in was what was about our structure why do we have six modules of 30 credits until recently in fact up to last last academic year VMSC consisted of 8 modules of 22.5 credits why do we now move to six modules of 30 credits well there are two reasons the first is to do with SOAS as a whole SOAS two years ago decided to harmonize the credit framework of all our degrees so that every master's consisted of modules that carried either 15 credits or 30 credits we decided because we take one module per study session and there are four study sessions per year we decided that if we slim down the modules to 15 credits it would take an inordinately long time for our students to complete their programs we certainly wouldn't be able to say you can complete your master's in two years which many of you told us you wanted to do but also it means that we can provide modules with more in depth assignments that's why we have week 5 and week 10 of the study session in which you really work on your assignment you go deeper it also means again that you can more easily complete in two years six modules goes into eight study sessions more easily than eight modules yeah you can do it but it's a much more packed schedule so that's why we did it those students that embarked a couple of years ago we've given the option of over continuing with the MSc of eight modules of 22.5 credits or if you wish you can transfer to the 30 credits framework hopefully that's clear if there are any other questions on that please do ask me or are there any other questions that people have is it possible to switch modules from one program not available on another so what you're asking is if a particular so just to be clear are you asking if a module is available on program A but not on program B is it possible to switch to a module from program B is that correct unfortunately not because the framework of our programs is that you choose from a specific list of modules so unfortunately you can't mix and match to that extent however what we do try and do what we do try and do is where a module would be of interest across various different programs we offer it as an optional module as an elective on more than one so you'll have seen that corporate finance appears on various different programs you will find that that macroeconomic policy appears on a number of different programs because it's relevant to those programs so we would hope that a student taking a program making finance and financial law or public financial management or banking would have made available to them all the all the modules would be relevant to that program ok since there are no more questions thank you very much for your attention and I and my colleagues look forward to receiving your application and indeed overseeing your studies over the course of the next few years so thank you very much