International Business – BBus (Hons)

Stand out from the crowd with an honours degree in international business, with a choice of French or Chinese as a mandatory language option. This course will open up a range of opportunities in terms of your future career direction and prospects from both a domestic and international perspective. The benefits of practical experience gained through the work placement element of this course will provide you with an opportunity to consolidate and apply business skills within an international business setting. It is likely to offer you a distinct advantage in securing graduate employment.

This four-year honours degree offers an opportunity to study the key international business subjects of accounting, finance, economics, management, marketing, human resource management and computing with a focus on how companies do business in an international setting.

The inclusion of a 20-week work placement in the third year of the course gives you an ideal opportunity to apply and embed your learning.

You will have the opportunity to study a wide range of business-related subjects in the early years, while still having the benefit of selecting the key subject options that interest you most during the final two years of the course. In addition, you will benefit from a 20-week industry placement, which will afford you the opportunity to put into practice the knowledge you will have acquired in the classroom. the option to further internationalise your learning experience by undertaking a semester or year aboard at one of our many partner universities is also open to you. Furthermore, you will develop your IT skills through the use of a variety of relevant software application packages.

Students must meet the requirement of 10 credits in a language subject in 1st, 2nd and 4th year. This is reduced to 5 credits in 3rd year due to the industry placement. Business English is available as a language subject option for non-native English speakers only.

After the recent sharp global recession and as Ireland move into recovery, skills shortages are now emerging in certain areas and occupations. Global trends and drivers of change such as changing consumption patterns and shifting power structures are shaping international markets and emerging enterprise sectors. Other core or transversal skills like languages and entrepreneurship will also underpin Ireland’s use of its talent offering as a global differentiator (National Skills Strategy, 2025).

The National Skills Bulletin (2018) highlights Ireland’s current skills shortages by occupation. These include: multilingual skills for associate professionals in ICT, sales & marketing, administrative staff in financial service, freight transport, distribution & logistics, customer service representatives and product/account managers. Foreign language and cultural awareness languages is in high demand for businesses. Languages of interest include: German, French Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and the Nordic languages.

Preliminary figures for 2018 show that goods exports were valued at €140,835 million in 2018, the highest total on record. This is an increase of €18,123 million (+15%) over 2017. The largest category of exports was Medical and pharmaceutical products. Exports of these goods accounted for a third (33%) of all exports.