Entrepreneurship and Business with Foundation Year

Entrepreneurship and business is a pairing that equips you with both the analytical rigour to understand how organisations function and the creative, practical mindset needed to identify opportunities and build something new. Business studies provides frameworks for thinking about strategy, marketing, finance, operations and organisational behaviour, while entrepreneurship focuses on the specific challenges of venture creation, from finding a viable idea and assembling a team to managing uncertainty and scaling a business. Together they develop a genuinely distinctive combination of skills.

At the University of Portsmouth, this four-year full-time programme includes a foundation element, making it accessible to students who wish to build their academic and analytical foundations before beginning the main degree. The programme is also exceptionally well structured for practical and international experience: it includes a sandwich year for extended professional placement, a year abroad at a partner institution overseas, and work placement experience built into the programme. This means you graduate with significant real-world exposure alongside your academic knowledge, having worked in professional environments, studied internationally and engaged with entrepreneurial challenges across the four years of the programme.

Graduates with a background in entrepreneurship and business are well placed for a wide range of careers. Graduate management schemes, roles in start-up and scale-up companies, consultancy, marketing, finance, product development and business development are all natural pathways. Many graduates go on to found or co-found ventures of their own, drawing on the combination of business knowledge and entrepreneurial thinking developed during their studies.

The placement and international experience built into the programme is particularly valued by employers in organisations that operate across borders or value commercial initiative. Postgraduate study in entrepreneurship, business administration or management is also a route for those who wish to specialise further.