Could your next step be a degree in finance and accounting?
Which university and degree to choose is the question on the lips of many GCSE and A level students, and why wouldn’t it be? The pressure is on from all sides and hours, weeks, months and even years of research and planning can be involved in choosing the right degree subject – especially if all that slogging over Latin grammar and physics hasn’t left you with a clear and burning desire to retranslate the works of Ovid or claim Stephen Hawking’s Lucasian Chair at Cambridge – and you might find yourself wandering a little aimlessly in an academic minefield.
So, do you continue with the subject you quite liked at school, but wouldn’t really miss if you weren’t to pursue it for the next three years, and even beyond? Do you follow your parents’ career choices or get carried away with your friends’ ambitions and mistake them for your own? Unless you really have a passion for a subject, choosing just quite what to do with the rest of your life before you’re even allowed to buy a half pint at the local pub can seem a little daunting.
The Traditional Academic Route
You could end up reading Chaucer on riverbanks, making expeditions to Pompeii, or dazzling others with your grasp of pure mathematics. When you pass through the academic system and out into the working world, you could continue in your beloved field, or perhaps take a step into a professional postgraduate qualification. Whether you’re a classicist, archaeologist, or psychologist, there are financial and accounting training contracts awaiting you after your degree if you decide that, after all, you really wouldn’t mind being an accountant.
The Other Option – An Accounting Degree
A degree in accounting is more vocational – a bit like studying medicine or law – and will lead you in to a profession if you want it to when you reach the end of your three-year course. So, if you are looking for a clear career path, professional focus, and future financial security, you can step onto a degree programme that will train you in a respected career, and which could even put you ahead of your peers when you come to study for your post-graduate professional accountancy qualifications.
Many universities’ accounting degrees offer modules that would exempt you from taking certain exams on the CIMA, ACCA and ACA syllabi (the professional exams you could take to become a fully qualified accountant after your degree). So, you’ll not only save time at the crucial early stages of your career, but you’ll also have confidence in your theoretical knowledge and be able to put it to work – rather than worrying about matching your exam results to your professional performance.
Where to study it?
If you’re a budding accountant, you can find out about all the different accounting degrees on offer in the UK – and how they compare to each other – on the Times Good University Guide Accounting and Finance page. You’ll also find direct links to 2008’s top ten universities for Accounting and Finance here:
- London School of Economics
- Edinburgh
- Warwick
- Manchester
- Nottingham
- Bristol
- Glasgow
- Leeds
- Queen’s Belfast
- Loughborough
What you’ll be studying?
The finance side of your degree is likely to cover some core modules, although you would normally have the option of taking some electives.
It is likely you will be studying topics such as business planning, quantitative analysis and financial markets. You will get a good grounding in the world of finance in general, but also see what an accountant actually does on a daily basis and be able to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
You’ll find out from the different universities’ websites that your degree need not only involve the nitty-gritty of accounting and number crunching. You could spend a year in industry or abroad, or choose to marry your finance studies with a modern foreign language, politics, business studies, or IT.
The opportunities are broad, but to find out whether all this really interests you, it might be worth taking a glance over some financial publications, such as The Economist or the Financial Times , or simply take a look at the BBC business news.
If you’re interested, and want to find out more, then get a feel for finance, read up on the different courses and universities, decide where you would be happiest, and apply.
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