Substance and style: The fashion courses that are a cut above

Michael Prest meets the business schools who are queuing up to offer a range of tailored qualifications

Fashion is all the rage in postgraduate education. Later this year and early in 2012 three UK universities – Glasgow Caledonian, Coventry and the London College of Fashion, which is part of the University of the Arts – will launch fashion-related MBAs. They will join other MBAs and a host of connected Masters degrees in design and similar subjects which have emerged over the last decade or so: more than 50 business schools in the UK alone offer design-oriented Masters courses.

These schools have not simply ditched Harvard Business Review and embraced Vogue. There are solid economic reasons for the rise of fashion courses. "[The fashion industry] is not a fluffy thing. It's a real business," says Andrew Hughes, dean of the School of Management and Science at the London College of Fashion, which plans to introduce an EMBA in fashion next January.

The statistics bear him out. The industry's turnover in this country is about £21bn a year. Worldwide fashion sales run at more than $1,300bn (£790bn) a year. Apart from the general increase in affluence, three forces are driving the industry's expansion. First, fashion has become a truly international business. Rapid economic growth in Asia has propelled fashion sales in the region to $370bn, on a par with those in the traditional markets of Europe and North America.

Second, the industry is becoming ever more complex. The days of haute couture domination are long gone. Luxury brands such as Prada and Louis Vuitton account for no more than 5 per cent of global fashion sales. The great bulk come from more affordable premium brands and the high street. Top Shop is as much part of the industry as Burberry. Moreover, the industry includes the manufacturers and textile makers to form an intricate international web. "China is a fast-growing source of demand and supply in fashion," says Nadia Macdonald, head of academic development and practice at Coventry University's London Campus. The school is introducing a one-year MBA in international fashion management in September, which will be taught on its London campus.

And third, the industry was poorly run for many years – especially at the top end of the business – by designers whose strength was creativity rather than management. "The industry was unprofitable, unattractive to investors, old-fashioned, and had no brand management," says Professor Denis Morisset, who leads the MBA in luxury brand management at ESSEC, the business school outside Paris. He argues that Bernard Arnault, the French entrepreneur who built up the luxury conglomerate LVMH and in the process became France's richest man, stimulated business schools to start fashion-oriented courses because he wanted to hire highly qualified graduates to professionalise the industry.

Others agree that the industry needs better-trained managers. "Our degree merges business with fashion to make it more professional. The industry now wants graduates who have gone beyond MAs", says Paresh Parmar, course leader for the MBA in fashion brand management at the University of Central Lancashire. He says the university introduced the course because the British Council had told it that students, particularly in India and China, had enquired about such a course.

Glasgow Caledonian University is responding to the same demand. Its business school is starting an MBA in luxury brand marketing at its London campus in September. The degree was given a soft launch in February. "We wanted to test the market and got a good response. We have a healthy number of applicants for entry and a nice mix of EU and international students," says Professor Christopher Moore, vice dean of Caledonian Business School. Students will take the course at the university's London campus.

So what do students doing these courses get for their money? The answer partly depends on the value an MBA adds. Masters degrees in fashion have been around much longer in the UK than MBAs. The London Fashion School, for instance, offers Masters degrees in strategic fashion marketing, design management and international fashion management. Typically, students taking such degrees have little work experience and are trying to boost their chances of getting a job.

In some cases, a mainstream MA or MSc in management might serve the purpose just as well. Leicester University School of Management, for example, offers an MSc in management and an MSc in marketing. "We're trying to bring different disciplines, a diversity of approaches, to encourage our students to reflect on their roles and the responsibilities of management," says Professor Steve Smith, MBA programme leader. For some employers a graduate who is trained to ask the right questions might be more attractive than one with a more specialised degree whose critical faculties are less sharp.

But whatever the degree's name – fashion, brand, marketing – the emphasis is on business. "As the fashion sector has become more sophisticated, it needs people who can take the business on to the next level. What differentiates us is that we're concerned with the business of fashion, the management of fashion and not the creation of fashion, says Moore.

"It's a business and management degree located in the fashion industry," says Hughes of the London College of Fashion's forthcoming EMBA. "People are recognising that there's another side to fashion. People can engage in it with a passion but not as designers," says Moore. Whether Masters or MBA, fashion courses cover the same core curriculum: strategy, finance, human resources and so on.

Still, many employers are looking for degrees tailored to their industries. "Fashion is an enormous industry with huge potential that needs a new breed of manager," says Macdonald. Coventry has designed its new MBA to fit the industry's rapidly changing needs. There will be four intakes a year and every student will be guaranteed a 10-week placement to give them practical training. "We like to think that by the time they've finished their internship they'll have an offer," she adds.

UCLAN, which claims to be the first UK university to offer a fashion brand management degree, also stresses how employable its graduates are. Students must have at least two years' work experience before starting the degree. A key part of the degree is the project, which has to be genuinely commercial with measurable outcomes. A student has a real budget and must set clear objectives. "It's easy to get lost in the creativity. But there has to be a real viability in the project", Parmar says. He hopes to form links with schools in countries such as China, India and Russia which plan to offer similar degrees.

At the London College of Fashion Hughes points out that a critical part of the industry, especially for the High Street chains and other volume retailers, is ensuring that the right goods are in the right place at the right time. "There is logistics, logistics, logistics", says Hughes. And so important is China as a supplier that our MSc in international fashion management includes a compulsory language – Mandarin."

The college's EMBA is targeted at executives with eight or 10 years experience, probably in the fashion industry. The course takes two years and students may receive funding from their employers. They will be expected to come once a month to London for an intensive weekend; the rest of the course will be delivered by distance learning, using podcasts, discussion boards, chat rooms and course materials.

And to emphasise the school's down-to-earth approach, Hughes has some sobering advice for students. Rather than aim immediately for a glamorous life in luxury goods, "students are better off going to work for the big chains," he says. "It is easier to move into luxury goods from there."

All universities offering fashion-related degrees make great play of their connections with the industry. Coventry, for example, has strong links with the Sino-British Cooperation Centre for Textile and Fashion Production and takes students to Milan fashion week and Paris Premiere Vision, the annual international exhibition of textile fabrics. The last of the degree's four 10-week terms is spent in the industry. Coventry's London campus in Spitalfields is not far from the appropriately named Fashion Street!

The London College of Fashion has planned its EMBA on the basis of its experience with other postgraduate degrees and in consultation with the industry, including the British Fashion Council. The council promotes British designers and London's position in the global industry.

This type of networking is important, but a defining feature of the fashion business is entrepreneurship. The industry is very fluid and fickle. Nottingham University Business School's Institute for Enterprise and Innovation offers an MSc in entrepreneurship. "The key part of entrepreneurship is looking at things in a different way. That is where the link to the fashion industry comes in," says Simon Mosey, head of the institute. He points out that entrepreneurship is not confined to small organisations. There is ample scope for applying such skills in large companies as well – and fashion companies are no exception.

Design, too, is obviously at the heart of fashion. Leeds University's School of Design has MA degrees in design, advanced textile and performance clothing, advertising and design, and textile innovation and branding. There is an MSc in design as well, where the content is more based on science and technology. "The philosophy is very much to try to apply design thinking rather than traditional craft skills," says Professor Tom Cassidy, MA programme leader. This year four out of the 40 students taking the MA in design are specialising in fashion. "They are creative, but there's a high level of technical input," Cassidy says. Studying research methodology, for example, is compulsory. It is clear evidence that fashion education has become as hard-nosed as the fashion business.