Is a M.S. Accountancy a good program for financial analysis?
I'm looking at graduate programs in the area I'll be living in to go to so I can break into financial analysis. Most FA jobs require a finance OR accounting degree and it doesn't seem like they have any preference between the two. In fact, a lot of senior FA jobs prefer a CPA which makes me think they lean more towards accounting.
http://www.sjsu.edu/lucasschool/prospective/msa/
That's the program. Will this be good preparation for financial analysis?
Comments
Hi Tim. For a FA job you need to know some accounting. You need to know at least some cost accounting and some financial accounting. It seems you would need to take a course in cost accounting to supplement that need, since it doesn't appear in the course options available for that MBA. The key concepts in that area are budgets and how to account for inventory. Budgets you will see everywhere. Inventory is somewhat likely you will see it, unless you find employment in a purely service company. Taxes and auditing are somewhat important, they seems to be included in the curriculum. ( http://www.sjsu.edu/lucasschool/current/msa/course... )
An additional issue to consider is growth potential within the career. Nowadays most jobs do prefer CPA's as finance managers and even CFO's. For this reason, it might be advisable to prepare your university course work to meet the educational requirements to sit for the CPA exam. Some of the requirements vary from state to state. If this would be a possible career path that might interest you, then you might need to also incorporate Business law courses into your curriculum of study. Usually one must have 2 business law courses. Go to this page, California Board o Accountancy, into the applicants handbook ( http://www.dca.ca.gov/cba/publications/exambk1.pdf ). Assuming it's California where you would want to apply for licenciature.
Futhermore, if you should decide to persue a CFO position, you would need to know some basic finance. This is because CFO's need to make decisions how to finance projects, how to hedge interest rates, and things of that nature. You would need to learn about interest rate swaps, about capital budgeting, that is IRR, NPV... But that is not advance finance, with basic finance you should be alright.
Generally, the graduate program you mention seems to be a good preparation for the job requierements for FA, with the minor exeptions I discribed. Good luck in your career.