"MSc Economics": How much does it cost?

When any Chinese student or overseas student decides they want to study abroad (whether it is economics or any other subject) there are a number of considerations:

1. "The ranking of the University".
2. "The Ranking of the department".
3. The cost of the course.
4. The cost of living in the University city.
5. English language requirements and whether pre-course English courses are available.

We have already posted on issues (1) and (2) although there will be more on these in later postings, more specifically, rankings of individual economics departments.

Which UK University to study in? "Academic Ranking of World Universities"

In this post we look at the cost for each course. The Universities chosen are from the sidebar listings which include only those Universities that appear in the "Shanghai Jiao Tong University" TOP 100 Universities plus a couple of other Universities that score well for Social Sciences.

The UK Universities in the TOP 100 are can be seen in the above post.

Of those Universities with a 1 year MSc Economics programme below we compare the costs. Note that these costs are for OVERSEAS students. One reason for this post is that Universities seem to go out of there way to hide this information and it is rarely shown on the Economics pages themselves.

The costs are for the coming academic year, 2007/2008 unless stated.

University of Birmingham COST: £9,200
University of Bristol COST: £9,600
University of East Anglia COST: £8,995
University of Manchester COST: £9,500
University of Nottingham COST: £9,600
University of Sheffield COST: £9,450
University College London COST: £12,480 (for 2006/2007)
University of Warwick COST: £9,500


Given London is the most expensive place to live, the large discrepancy between the UCL price and the others is of come concern. The prices of the other courses are relatively similar. Given the that all MSc Economics courses cover largely the same material even these small cost differences are worth looking at.

On the cost of living, apart from London, all the other Universities are in locations and cities with similar levels of cost. Birmingham and Manchester are the big cities with large Chinese communities.

We will review individual cities in a later post.