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Business Degrees With Accounting Concentrations: Get In The Good Books
Thinking about earning a business degree? Good idea. A well-designed business degree program can teach marketable skills that are applicable to a broad range of industries, giving you more options when you begin looking at career opportunities. However, business degrees are among the most popular degree programs with college students.
In order to better stand apart in this popular field, why not choose to enhance your degree qualifications with a targeted concentration that teaches specialized skills. For example, if you’re confident with numbers and calculations, and are good at understanding regulations, laws and codes, consider pursuing a business degree with a concentration in accounting. Learn more about a/an:
Every business organization needs to know where the money is coming from and where it’s going, so accounting skills could help you stand out from the throng of other business degree graduates.
*Fact: The National Center for Education Statistics reports that of the 1.5 million bachelor degrees awarded in 2006-2007(the last year for which statistics are available), nearly 330,000 were business majors, making it the most popular undergraduate major by far(i). At the master’s degree level, business degrees are the second most popular field of study, after education.
Accounting Skills: More Than Incomings and Outgoings
Accounting skills can go beyond just "balancing the books". In addition to preparing financial records and tracking the incomings and outgoings of a business, graduates with accounting training can gain analytical skills through their education and on-the-job experience that allows them to perform a variety of vital functions, including analysing benefits and compensation, cost accounting, providing internal or external auditing of financial records, tax advice, and more.
An undergraduate business degree with an accounting concentration should help you learn skills that include how to:
- Manage a complete set of accounts for a small to moderate sized organization
- Prepare, comprehend and interpret required financial statements according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)
- Explain the difference between financial, managerial, cost accounting and tax accounting principles and practices
- Understand legal and ethical issues facing accounting in the Sarbanes-Oxley era.
Accounting Degree, or Business Degree With Accounting Concentration? Note that a business degree with a concentration in accounting isn’t necessarily what you’d want if you’re interested in becoming a Certified Personal Accountant or Certified Management Accountant. If that’s the career path you know you want to pursue, a straight-up accounting degree is probably your best bet.
But choosing a business degree with an accounting concentration allows you to study a broader mix of topics, and can prepare you to pursue work in accounting functions in an industry environment while also offering you the skills to seek work in more general business roles. Project management, marketing, human resource management, and microeconomics are all part of a well-designed general business administration degree, and you might miss out on some of these topics within the curriculum of accounting-only degrees.
If you’re interested in a career path that includes pursuing general business positions, choosing an accounting-only degree could prove to be too narrow of a focus. A business degree with an accounting program concentration would most likely arm you with a broader set of marketable skills. Learning more about these specialized degree fields is the first step toward achieving your goals:
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References:
(i) http://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=37
