BUSINESS MANAGEMENT OR ACCOUNTING?
QI’m a grade 12 student and I’m confused as to which field I should choose – business management or accounting.
AChoosing the right course depends not only upon which career you eventually want to pursue but also upon your skill sets and abilities. In terms of career, a degree in Business Management will help you land a job in sales or operations while a degree in accounting would help you become a tax or cost accountant. People working in accounting are concerned with tracking and reporting financial transactions of a business and the work content is primarily quantitative unlike a business manager who will use this data to attempt to identify and plug areas of weakness.
In accounting, selecting core courses is critical as their selection will provide students the necessary skill sets required to find a job on graduation. These would include financial accounting managerial accounting audit and tax. In addition to the core subjects, students will be required to study maths, economics and business.
Today advancements in technology are proving to be a major disrupter across industries resulting in obliterating some job functions, modifying the content and approach of other jobs and creating opportunities in areas which were non-existent. In future, we would expect accounting jobs to become analytical and consultative in nature while the traditional role of recording financial transactions would become automated. Simply put, figures will be provided by the advanced technology, but its interpretation, analysis of the data are some of the functions that the accountant would be required to do. For instance auditing of a company would be aided by automation, but analysing the balance sheet and coming up with answers would be expected from accountants. The trend in automation will soon manifest itself in the revised curriculum being taught in universities.
Be it any subject, understanding, interpreting and applying the big data are key areas of business management. Given the dynamic work scenario in the future, it is quite an exciting field and covers a large spectrum spanning areas of HR, administration to finance and marketing.
Business and management degrees focus on how organisations operate – what they do, their styles of management and their business strategies. A course in management provides an overview of business practices and equips the candidate to understand functions of various departments and manage a successful enterprise. In the final years of the course, you could specialise in specific areas ranging from marketing, finance, human resources, brand management or international business.
It is also possible you could pursue a dual degree in accounting with business management or a degree in management with a specialisation in finance. Both programs are offered by the best universities on both sides of the Atlantic – Harvard, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania LSE, London Business School, Manchester and UCL amongst others.