IN today’s corporate society, the smartest workers are business savvy. Unfortunately, employers frequently complain that graduate recruits lack commercial acumen.

But university graduates are increasingly distinguishing themselves by taking a masters degree in management. Last year more than 50,000 graduates signed up for an MSc or MA in business and management studies before joining the world of work.

“Graduates with first degrees are looking for some form of differentiation. They need an edge for employment,” says Jeanette Purcell, the chief executive of the Association of MBAs.

The association has just accredited 12 pre-experience masters in management courses — so-called because course attendees don’t have to have business experience, unlike an MBA where prior experience is required.

Tony Sims, course director for the MA in Business Management at Kingston Business School, says that there are currently 400 to 500 applicants for the 60 places on the course. About a third of the students come directly from university while the rest have one or two years’ work experience.

“The fresh graduates are people who are career-focused with a general appreciation of the need for business knowledge and skills, while those with experience realise that they lack the knowledge they need to move up the business ladder. These are resonably ambitious and confident people, who in my experience are very enthusiastic,” Sims says.

Professor Colin Eden, the director of the graduate school of business at the University of Strathclyde, has also seen demand rise. The school’s MSc in Business and Management was set up mainly for science and engineering students seeking business knowledge, but the intake has now widened with more students with humanities, business and professional backgrounds applying.

Although originally one graduate in ten went on to convert his or her masters into an MBA, after a few years’ work experience, this has now fallen to one in twenty. “Employers are as satisfied with the masters graduates as they are the MBAs. Although they go into more junior positions to start with, they are usually doing as well as MBA graduates by the time they are 35,” Professor Eden says.

• Next week: Pre-experience masters versus MBAs