MSc in Economics and Business Administration (cand.merc.) — International Business and Management

What this programme is

The University of Southern Denmark’s cand.merc. is the Danish two-year MSc in Economics and Business Administration, and this profile covers the International Business and Management specialisation taught in English at the Odense campus.¹ It is 120 ECTS across four semesters: six compulsory courses across the first two semesters (60 ECTS), a third semester of 30 ECTS in electives, and a 30-ECTS master’s thesis in the fourth.¹

SDU does not name the six compulsory courses on the public programme page, so we do not list them; what it does publish is the ground they cover — “international business strategy, international strategic partnerships, international organizational structures, marketing channels and international entrepreneurship” — and where the degree is meant to lead: “classical positions in international business both in large corporations as well as in SMEs”, with graduates named as “line managers, country managers, international product and brand managers, as well as product and business developers”.¹

One structural point to hold on to before comparing this with anything else on the site. The cand.merc. is an umbrella degree with sixteen specialisations — grouped under Marketing Management, Accounting and Finance, Strategy and Leadership, and Innovation, Growth and Sustainability — spread across four campuses: Esbjerg, Sønderborg, Kolding and Odense.⁷ SDU’s hub page does not state the language of instruction for each one, so the English-taught claim on this page belongs to this specialisation at this campus, verified on its own page, and should not be read across to the other fifteen without checking.

Admissions — the part almost nobody else publishes

Most schools in this catalogue say some version of “admission is competitive and the intake is limited” and stop. SDU publishes the arithmetic.

Stage one is the Danish legal right of admission (retskrav). Holders of SDU’s own BSc in Economics and Business Administration and its BSc in Market & Management Anthropology have a legal claim to a place and are admitted first.² Everyone else — including every international applicant — is competing for what is left after that.

**Stage two is a published points score.**²

*“Available study places are offered to the applicants who achieve the highest total score. If more applicants achieve the same score, a simple average mark will be used for selection.”*²

Two things follow that are worth acting on. First, the average mark is a tie-break, not a threshold — SDU publishes no minimum GPA, and a stronger transcript does not out-rank a better-matched one. Second, the three points for a clean subject match are worth more than the other two combined, which makes the composition of your bachelor’s the dominant admission variable here.

That composition is specific. You need at least 75 ECTS within economics and business administration, with a minimum of 5 ECTS in each of microeconomics or managerial economics, accounting, corporate finance, marketing, organizational theory, statistics, and methods for the collection and analysis of data — plus 5 ECTS in theory of science and scientific methodology, or a bachelor thesis of at least 15 ECTS — and a further 35–40 ECTS of business economics on top.² If you are short in one area, “admission to the Master’s programme will require that you follow supplementary courses”.²

So this is not a conversion master, and you should not treat it as one. If you are coming from engineering, the humanities or the sciences with no business credits, the honest reading is that you are either ineligible or looking at supplementary coursework and the loss of those three points. Start instead from MiM programmes that accept a non-business degree — SDU is the counterexample on that page, not an option on it.

No GMAT, no GRE. Neither the programme page nor the entry-requirements page mentions an admissions test anywhere, and the selection rules are stated wholly in credits and grades — so on the published wording a test is not a described step in this admission. English proficiency is IELTS Academic 6.5 with no band below 6.5, or TOEFL iBT 83 with no section below 20, or Cambridge C1 Advanced at 180, taken within the last two years, and is waived if your bachelor’s carries the legal right.⁸

Money, and the three clauses that qualify the free-tuition headline

For an EU, EEA or Swiss citizen the arithmetic is short: there is no tuition, this is a two-year degree at a public Danish university, and your budget is a living-costs budget. That is the same deal as Aarhus, and cheaper than Denmark’s private-fee alternative at Copenhagen Business School for non-EU payers.

For everyone else, the headline is EUR 15,000 per year at the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences.⁴ Three published clauses tighten it, and they are the reason this section exists:

1. You pay a full year ahead. The programme page’s own words: “EUR 15,000 per year (you must pay a full year ahead)”.¹ Add the EUR 200 application deposit, which is due before you can submit and is credited against the first tuition payment only if you are admitted.³
2. You are competing for a slice, not the cohort. SDU states that *“In 2026, SDU aims to allocate approximately 16% of the remaining study places, following admission of applicants with a legal right of admission, to fee-paying applicants.”*³ Read that sequence carefully — the legal-right admissions come out first, and the ~16% is a share of what remains after them.
3. There is no SDU scholarship for this programme. SDU offers “a very limited number of scholarships for non EU/EEA citizens” and says they “can only be awarded for programmes offered on our campuses in Sønderborg and Vejle”.⁶ International Business and Management is taught at Odense. A fee-paying applicant here should plan on the full EUR 15,000 a year and look to external funding.

On the figure itself: the euro price is a convenience, not the currency of account. SDU warns that “the prices presented in EUR are a guideline only and subject to EUR exchange rate fluctuations”, quoted at “a rate of 750 DKK per 100 EUR” — roughly DKK 112,500 a year — and accepts payment only in DKK or EUR.⁴ ⁵ The rate is labelled “As of September 2026 intake” and SDU publishes nothing later, so treat it as the latest published figure rather than a quote for a 2027 start.⁵ Tuition exemptions exist for holders of a permanent Danish residence permit, family-reunification permits and refugee status, documented at application.⁵

feesNumeric on this profile records the EU/EEA figure of zero, which is the convention this site applies to every public Nordic university — so this programme sorts as free on the cheapest MiM list, and a non-EU reader should read the fee prose rather than the sort. Put the full number together on the cost calculator and in how much a MiM in Europe costs.

Dates, and a direction most applicants get backwards

**Two intakes a year — September and February.**¹ That is unusual in Europe and it is the practical reason to look at SDU: a February start turns a lost application cycle into a six-month wait instead of a twelve-month one. See European MiMs with a January or spring intake for the rest of that short list.

The deadlines are published as standing annual dates, not as a dated calendar for one cycle, so the years on this page’s timeline are our projection from SDU’s own day-and-month rule:¹ ³

The non-EU deadline is the earlier one, by a month, for both intakes. That is the opposite of the usual assumption, and it is the single most common way to lose a year here. Add the EUR 200 deposit, which has to clear before you can submit, and the real personal deadline is earlier still.³ Check it against the rest of the field on the deadline tracker.

Careers, outcomes and what SDU does not publish

SDU publishes no employment rate, no salary figure, no class size and no acceptance rate for this programme, so we quote none. That is a real gap and you should weigh it — it is the same gap this site records on several public-university profiles, and it is one of the things a private school with a careers office measured on placement statistics does differently. Do not fill it from an aggregator; ask the programme office.

What SDU does state is the destination — line management, country management, international product and brand management, and product and business development, in both large corporations and SMEs¹ — and one thing that is genuinely rare and worth counting: “Guaranteed student housing for all internationals”.¹ In a European market where housing is often the binding constraint on actually taking up an offer, a guarantee is a material benefit even though it is not a number.

On staying in Denmark afterwards, see working in Denmark after a European MiM and post-study work visas in Europe, and Nordics MiM career outcomes for the regional pay picture.

Where this programme fits

Take it if you hold a business or economics bachelor’s with the subject spread SDU asks for and want the three points that go with a clean match; if you are an EU, EEA or Swiss citizen and a free two-year degree in Denmark changes your arithmetic; if a February start is the difference between applying now and waiting a year; or if you value knowing the actual selection rule before you apply rather than after you are rejected.

Leave it if you are switching into management from an unrelated discipline — the 75-ECTS prerequisite is a wall, and the non-business-degree list is the right starting point instead. Leave it too if you are a fee-payer who needs a scholarship, because SDU does not award one on this campus, or if you want a ranked, recruiter-facing brand: SDU does not appear in the Financial Times Masters in Management table, where CBS does.

Compare it across the region on the best MiM in the Nordics, against the full field on the composite rankings and the programme catalogue, and weigh the two-year public model against the one-year private one in one-year vs two-year MiM.

Every hard fact above is sourced to the University of Southern Denmark’s own pages (see Sources), retrieved 4 September 2026. Tuition rates, fee-payer quotas, selection rubrics and deadlines are reset each cycle — and SDU publishes its deadlines as standing dates without years, so confirm the current cycle on the school’s own page before you apply.