MSc Global Development (Globalisation, Trade & Industry)

For entry in the academic year beginning September 2027, the tuition fees are as follows:

• MSc (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £15,400
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £30,500

The fees quoted above are fully inclusive of tuition, administration and computational costs.

Fees for entry are subject to yearly review. The University reserves the right to increase your tuition fee by up to 7% each year for courses lasting more than one year, including to reflect rising costs associated with delivering our educational and wider student experience. Postgraduate fees information .

Always contact the admissions team if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

International student CAS deposit

Self-funded international applicants are required to pay a deposit of £2500 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. Some applicants will be required to pay a higher deposit. More information on tuition fee deposits .

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

We know that student finance can be complicated. The links below provide further information to help guide you.

• Learn more about - student finance options for UK students .
• Learn more about - fees and finance for international students .
• Graduates of The University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University can receive a 10% discount on their master's degree tuition fees as part of our Manchester Alumni Loyalty Discount scheme.

The unit aims to: introduce students to some of the biggest challenges facing the world in the 21st century. The course is complementary to the other core semester 1 course for all MSc Global Development students - Development Fundamentals - which examines 
history, theories and different actors in and of development. Global Development 
Challenges is focused on a series of contemporary mega challenges which are global in scope. They are global in the sense that they relate to both global North and South, albeit unevenly, and cannot be 'solved' by one part of the world alone, yet simultaneously involve major inequalities in their underlying causes and consequences.

The unit aims:  

*  to introduce students to some of the biggest challenges facing the world in the 21st century,  

*  to complement the other core semester 1 course for all MSc Global Development students – Development Fundamentals - which examines history, theories and different actors in and of development,

*  to focus on and explore a series of contemporary mega challenges which are global in scope. They are global in the sense that they relate to both global North and South, albeit unevenly, and cannot be ‘solved’ by one part of the world alone,yet simultaneously involve major inequalities in their underlying causes and consequences,

*  to support students to critically assess potential solutions to global challenges,

*  to explore the role of different actors in global challenges. 

Students should be able to discuss and debate current important development challenges with supporting evidence drawn from curated sources and skilfully analysed. Readings from the literature and from international development actors will be sourced and deployed using digital skills to extract, summarise, analyse and synthesise in the course of discussions and learning. Evidence, not limited to tables, charts and infographics should be produced to support debates and discussions by and among students. 

Syllabus (indicative curriculum content):

* Introduction to 21st century global development

* Global poverty and inequality

* From neoliberal to geostrategic globalization

* Technology, prosperity and inequality

* Life course shaping of world health

* Pandemic and global value chain

* Global carbon inequality

* Natural resource exploitation

* From ‘the end of development’ to a new politics of global development

* Global development roundtable

* Workshops on new industrial policy, digital transformation

* Workshops on social protection, migration, biodiversity, water, energy. 

Teaching and learning will occur mainly through weekly lecture sessions and three workshops, the latter of which will be based around a mixture of small group-work and class discussions and learning. The university VLE will be used to share key resources, including readings, lecture slides and recordings, podcasts and online resources as well as pre-recorded videos in some cases. 

• Explain a range of mega problems across the domains of prosperity, people and planet and how they unevenly relate to different parts of the world
• Critically reflect about the nature and extent of a series of contemporary challenges facing the world and the role of different actors in these, including systems of development cooperation
• Critically assess the relationship between major challenges facing the world, including the potential synergies and trade-offs involved

• Analyse how different theoretical approaches provide insights into specific global challenges and their policy applications

• Evaluate critically the causes of global development challenges, as well as the potential and limitations of proposed solutions

   

Apply  practical analysis skills to global problems, including critical reading, writing and argumentation and gain experience analysing and evaluating practices and policies against evidence used to achieve global development 

• Apply communication competence to transferable areas, including developing reasoned arguments, gathering, organising and using evidence and information from a wide variety of sources.
• Use digital tools to analyse and create visual representation of information

• Final exam, in person, invigilated (2 hours)
• Policy brief (1,000 words)

On the assessment form via VLE within 3 weeks of submission

Gonsior, V. and S. Klingebiel (2019). The Development Policy System under Pressure: Acknowledging Limitations, Sourcing Advantages and Moving towards a Broader Perspective. Discussion Paper 6/2019. Bonn, Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik. Available here: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/199558/1/die-dp-2019-06.pdf

Gore, C. (2015) The post-2015 moment: towards sustainable development goals and a new global development paradigm, Journal of International Development, 27 (6), 717-732.

Horner, R. (2020) Beyond the limits of international development? Towards a new paradigm of global development, Progress in Human Geography, 44 (3), 415-436.

Oldekop, J., R. Horner, D. Hulme, R. Adhikari, B. Agarwal, M. Alford, O. Bakewell, N. Banks, S. Barrientos, T. Bastia, A. Bebbington, U. Das, R. Dimova, R. Duncombe, C. Enns, D. Fielding, C. Foster, T. Foster, T. Frederiksen, P. Gao, T. Gillespie, R. Heeks, S. Hickey, M. Hess, N. Jepson, A. Karamchedu, U. Kothari, A. Krishnan, T. Lavers, A. Mamman, D. Mitlin, N.M. Tabrizi, T.R. Mueller, K. Nadvi, G. Pasquali, R. Pritchard, K. Pruce, C. Rees, J. Renken, A. Savoia, S. Schindler, A. Surmeier, G. Tampubolon, M. Tyce, V. Unnikrishnan and Y-F. Zhang (2020) COVID-19 and the case for global development, World Development, 134, 105044. DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105044.

Rosling, H., O. Rosling and A. Rosling Rönnlund (2018) Factfulness: Ten reasons we're wrong about the world—and why things are better than you think. London: Sceptre.

Sims, K., Banks, N., Engel, S., Hodge, P., Makuwira, J., Nakamura, N., Rigg, J., Salamanca, A., Yeophantong, P., Eds. (2022). The Routledge Handbook of Global Development, Routledge.

Steffen, W., et al (2015) Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science, 347 (6223), 736-746.

Scholte, J.A. and F. Söderbaum (2017) A changing global development agenda? Forum for Development Studies, 44 (1), 1-12.