MSc Management and Marketing

University College Cork’s MSc Management and Marketing is a 12-month, 90-ECTS, fully English-taught conversion master at Cork University Business School — which in December 2025 completed the “triple crown” of international accreditations, when EQUIS joined its existing AACSB and AMBA.⁴ ⁵ That makes CUBS Ireland’s fourth triple-accredited business school, and the first outside Dublin. It is built for graduates who took no, or almost no, management or marketing in their first degree, and it is a genuine pre-experience degree: **no GMAT or GRE, and no work experience required.**¹

Overview

UCC is one of Ireland’s oldest universities. It was established by royal charter of incorporation on 30 December 1845 as Queen’s College Cork, formally opened in 1849 with 115 students, and took its present name in 1908 under the Irish Universities Act.⁷ Its business school, Cork University Business School, sits in the College of Business and Law.

The accreditation story is recent and it is the main thing that has changed about this school’s standing. CUBS held AACSB and AMBA for some years; its own accreditations page records EQUIS as “achieved in December 2025”, completing the triple crown.⁴ UCC announced it publicly on 29 January 2026, describing the three together as “the three most rigorous and internationally recognised quality standards in business education” and noting that fewer than 150 business schools worldwide hold all three.⁵ Until that point Ireland’s triple-accredited schools were all in Dublin.

We flag one thing plainly, as we do on every profile: we are not quoting a Financial Times or QS position for this MSc, because neither table lists it. UCC is a well-known university with a globally-recognised business school, but this specific programme does not appear in the MiM rankings, and we would rather say so than attach a number we cannot stand behind. Judge it on its accreditations, its structure, its price and its fit. If a ranking is the thing you are optimising for, Ireland’s two FT-ranked MiMs are UCD Smurfit (#33) and Trinity (#38) — see the best MiM in Ireland and how to read MiM rankings.

Curriculum & structure

The degree is 90 ECTS over one year, at NFQ Level 9, and it splits cleanly in two.¹

Part I — 60 credits of taught modules, covering both halves of the title:¹

• Management: Human Resource Management · International Business Strategy · Project Management · Responsible Leadership · Ethical Issues in Business · Entrepreneurship & Social Impact · Professional and Personal Development
• Marketing: Market Research · Consumer Behaviour Theory & Practice · Marketing Communications · Digital Marketing for International Markets
• Opened by an Introduction to Management & Marketing, which is what a conversion cohort needs first.

**Part II — a single 30-credit Applied Research Project.**¹ This is the part worth reading closely, because it is where the programme differs from a standard taught master’s. The project can be completed inside a placement organisation: either with one of the school’s industry partners, who take students on the basis that they deliver a research or consultancy project, or with a placement the student secures independently — and UCC states that a dedicated placement manager helps students find one.¹ For a career-changer, a capstone spent solving a real organisation’s problem is usually the most valuable third of the year.

Teaching runs through lectures, interactive workshops, case studies and class discussion, industry presentations, company visits, guest speakers and research seminars.¹ Confirm the current module list on UCC’s own course page, as curricula are reviewed each year.

Admissions

Admission is decided on your academic record — not a test.¹ What UCC publishes:

• A Second Class Honours Grade II in a primary honours degree (NFQ Level 8);¹
• and a ceiling on business content, which is the unusual part: the degree must be “without significant management or marketing component (as adjudicated by the Programme Director, but normally less than 30 ECTS credits)”.¹ On most management masters a business major helps. Here it is a reason to be turned away — the programme exists specifically for graduates who did not study business, and UCC describes its intake as coming from science, arts, engineering, accounting, medicine, nursing, psychology, law and social science.
• Recognition of Prior Learning as an alternative route for applicants who miss the academic bar but bring “sufficient relevant professional experience”;¹
• No GMAT or GRE, and no work experience required;¹
• English proficiency for non-native speakers at UCC’s standard postgraduate band: IELTS 6.5 overall with 6.0 in each skill (academic version, valid two years), or TOEFL iBT 90 for exams sat before 21 January 2026 with component minima, or Duolingo 120 with a minimum 110 in each subscore.⁶

There are no dated admission rounds. UCC admits on a rolling basis for a September start: EU applicants face a “Rolling deadline. Open until all places have been filled”, and non-EU applicants “Open until all places have been filled or no later than 15 June”.¹ Read that 15 June as the latest possible closing point rather than a planning target — the real deadline is whenever the cohort fills, which is why UCC advises early application on both routes. Non-EU applicants also need time for an Irish study visa. If you would rather avoid an admissions test entirely, Ireland is a strong market for it: none of its four accredited management masters publishes a minimum GMAT — see MiM in Europe without the GMAT.

Fees & cost

For 2027/28, UCC publishes a total annual fee of €12,114 (EU) and €23,314 (non-EU) for this MSc.² One detail matters and is easy to get wrong: that figure already includes the €214 student capitation charge, because the 2027/28 schedule quotes fees inclusive.² The 2026/27 schedule uses the opposite convention — it lists tuition of €10,800 / €22,300 and instructs you to add the €210 capitation yourself.³ So the two published years are not directly comparable as printed, and UCC’s course page currently still shows the 2026/27 tuition figures.¹ If you are applying now, the 2027/28 total is your number.

On top of tuition:

• a €50 non-refundable application fee (“most of our courses have a non-refundable €50 application fee”);¹
• a €500 non-refundable deposit on acceptance for successful EU applicants.¹

At €23,314, the non-EU price is the lowest of Ireland’s four accredited management masters — below UCD Smurfit (€23,870), Trinity (€25,150) and DCU (~€23,000) — and the EU price, at €12,114, is the lowest by a wider margin. Cork is also cheaper to live in than Dublin: UCC’s own guidance for international students puts monthly costs at €481–€701 excluding accommodation and €1,181–€2,923 including it, with on-campus rooms at €800–€1,030 a month and a private house share at €700–€900 before bills.⁸ See how much a MiM in Europe costs, the cheapest MiM in Europe shortlist and the best-value shortlist for where that lands.

On funding, this page said for months that UCC listed a “College of Business and Law Merit Based Scholarships 2026/27” award as automatic but published no amount, grade threshold or deadline. That was true of the summary table; the award’s own detail pages, read at source on 3 September 2026, publish all three, and there are two separate awards rather than one.⁹

• Non-EU (international) students on a taught masters in the College of Business and Law are covered by the College of Business and Law Excellence Merit Based Scholarship 2026/27, worth “20% off tuition fee” for applicants holding UCC First Class Honours or equivalent (1H). It is “Awarded automatically at offer stage” with “No application required”, and needs an accepted offer in the UCC application portal. On the 2027/28 non-EU fee of €23,314 that is roughly €4,660.
• EU students are covered by a different, cash-value award — the College of Business and Law PG - EU Merit Based Scholarship — worth €1,000 for Cork University Business School and €700 for Law. It goes to the single student with the highest 1H in their undergraduate degree per full-time taught masters programme, so it is a top-of-cohort prize rather than a threshold award.

Both carry the same restriction, and it is the one that matters when you budget: “This scholarship cannot be combined or used in conjunction with any other scholarship offering of UCC.” A UCC award is therefore an alternative to every other UCC award, not a layer on top of one — the pattern that holds across school-funded money generally, while external schemes usually do stack. Note also that capitation fees are payable by all students and sit outside the tuition reduction. See MiM scholarships in Europe for the wider funding picture.

One figure a search snippet offered — a 10% award at 2H1 — appears on neither detail page and is not stated here.

Careers & post-study work

UCC publishes no employment rate, no salary figure and no class size for this MSc, so we do not quote any.¹ That gap is real and worth knowing before you apply — the two FT-ranked Dublin schools both report outcomes, and this one does not. What UCC does publish is a named graduate employer list: Nike, Dell, Accenture, Deloitte, Meta, Google, Harrods, HubSpot, Stripe, Jameson, Gym+Coffee and Dingle Distillery, among others, with graduate roles in business advisory and consultancy, brand management, social-media analysis, entrepreneurship, HR, operations and project management, and media creation.¹ That is a credible spread across big tech, professional services and Irish consumer brands — but it is a list of destinations, not a rate, and the two should not be confused.

On the visa, being in Cork rather than Dublin costs you nothing: the Third Level Graduate Programme (“Stamp 1G”) lets non-EU graduates of an eligible Irish master’s stay up to 24 months to find and take up work, and it is national rather than city-specific. What differs is the market on your doorstep — Dublin has the denser concentration of European headquarters, while Cork hosts substantial multinational operations of its own at a materially lower cost of living. The largest is Apple’s European headquarters at Hollyhill on the city’s northside, Cork’s biggest private employer with around 6,000 staff drawn from over 90 countries, which opened a further building for 1,300 people in February 2026.¹⁰ We map the details in working in Ireland after a European MiM, set the country against Britain in Ireland vs the UK for a MiM, and look at what Irish MiM graduates earn in Ireland MiM career outcomes.

Where UCC fits

UCC is best read as Ireland’s cheapest accredited management master, and its only one outside Dublin — with a specific applicant in mind. If you are coming from a genuinely non-business degree (and the under-30-ECTS rule means that is checked, not assumed), want an English-taught, GMAT-free year at a triple-crown school, value a capstone you can run inside a real organisation, and would rather not pay Dublin prices to live, this is a direct fit.

It is the wrong fit in two cases, and we would rather say so. If you already have a business or marketing background, you are likely to be ineligible rather than merely over-qualified. And if you are optimising for a ranked degree or for published outcome statistics, neither exists here — UCD Smurfit and Trinity carry the FT positions and report the employment rates.

Weigh all four against each other on the best MiM in Ireland, see where they sit together on the Ireland MiM hub, and compare the programme against the wider field on the composite rankings and across the full programme catalogue. If you are still deciding whether the degree itself is worth it, start with is a MiM worth it in 2026 and our guide to building a competitive MiM profile.

Every hard fact above is sourced to University College Cork’s own pages (see Sources), retrieved 1 September 2026. Fees, deadlines, entry requirements and accreditations change each cycle — always confirm the current details on UCC’s official course page before you apply.