Master of Business Psychology University of Newcastle - UON

Positives: The course covers a great breadth of content in terms of both psychology & business units. For those who are new to either discipline it offers both foundational aspects, as well as more in depth focus on areas of interest. The elective units are broad & for there are many avenues to delve deeply into various specialities, e.g.: psychology of marketing; of leadership; of performance etc. I was lucky to encounter a couple of outstanding lecturers in my course who were clearly dedicated to teaching students who are keen to learn. I've studies at a few unis now and there are not many lecturers you can say stay with you past the study experience.

Negatives: The negative aspects have to be the flipside of the positives. For those who have studied either business or psychology at undergraduate level, some of the foundational units are repetitious & frankly boring. RPL did not recognise undergrad units for postgrad work despite mirror curriculum content, and in one instance the very same textbook. It is painful for people who truly want to learn to tick boxes & pay fees for time spent treading water. Unfortunately, whilst I experienced two stellar lecturers of impressive repute, I also had one who was at the opposite end of the spectrum. Quality of teaching staff to hungry learners matters & this university obviously gets it on one level, but not so much on another. In several courses with the same lecturer I experienced assessments covering topic from other unit readings & content etc. and faced major hurdles in raising concerns on this front. Having said this, after extreme persistence & pursuing multiple avenues, to the credit of the university they resolved the issues.

My advice to future students is: Obviously if you are accepted into the course you will have a psych background, so my advice would be to try and diversify as much as possible from duplicating undergrad psych content where you can to make it a fun learning experience.