Manchester Metropolitan University Business School

Age: 122, if you count from its origins in 1889 as Manchester Commercial Evening School.

History: The university began to award degrees in the Thirties. It went through various incarnations before emerging as Manchester polytechnic and then became a university in 1992. Postgraduate programmes, including the MBA, have been running for more than 20 years.

Address: Located at the Aytoun Campus in Manchester city centre, close to Piccadilly station.

Ambience: Postgraduates are based in a swanky award-winning building, and MBAs are in a new executive development suite. It has a spacious, four-storey library that combines quiet and group-working spaces and a large computer lab.

Vital statistics: One of the largest business schools of its kind in the UK. The MBA can be studied full-time over one year, part-time over 30 months or by block release. All MBA courses are AMBA-accredited. The school has all the important seals of approval for its Masters courses. Its doctoral training is fully accredited by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Added value: Strong industrial links and an associate of the Edward de Bono Foundation UK. MBA electives include creativity, sustainable development, project management, e-commerce and entrepreneurship, and students can specialise by linking two elective modules with a consultancy project. There's also a development programme consisting of workshops, weekend stays and a residential week spent at an overseas business school in Prague or Beijing.

Easy to get into? For the MBA, you'll need a good degree or equivalent and at least three years' managerial experience.

Glittering alumni: Mike Turner, former CEO of BAE Systems; Paul Walsh, CEO of Diageo.

Gurus: Professors Rosemary Lucas, human resource management; Scott Moss, policy modelling; Bob Sweeting, financial management; Lynn Martin, enterprise and SMEs; David Leece, mortgages; and Heinz Tüselmann, international business.

International connections: Partnerships with universities in North America, Latin America, Europe, Russia, Asia and Australia.

Student profile: The average age of students on the MBA is 32. The male-to-female ratio is 7:3 on the part- and full-time programmes. Students travel abroad via the management development study tour, which looks at overseas markets. The school has already visited Hungary, Spain, the Czech Republic, China and Slovenia. Workshops in Hong Kong, Russia and the US are planned.

Cost: £15,000, part-time or full-time.

Who's the boss? Professor Ruth Ashford.

Prospectus: +44 (0)161 247 6601; www.business.mmu.ac.uk; mba@mmu.ac.uk