Our BSc (Hons) in Accounting and Finance (with placement year) prepares you for a career in accountancy or the financial sector, and gives you a strong understanding of core business principles and practice.

You’ll develop an in-depth understanding of how accounting and finance fits into the broader context of business and management, and study topics such as:

• Capital Markets, Investment and Finance
• Auditing
• Corporate Reporting
• Taxation
• Company Law and Administration

The programme gives you solid theoretical foundations, and applies this knowledge to real-world commercial situations.

You will be taught by leading academics with extensive experience in the accounting and finance sector. You’ll learn how to develop and apply accounting and finance strategies that enhance corporate value, and develop the techniques and understanding of specialist databases you need for a career in the accounting and finance sector.

A sandwich placement year, taken in year three of the programme, enables you to develop your skills and professional confidence - and boosts your employability on graduation.

Sandwich year

This 4-year programme offers you the opportunity to take up a placement year working in business in your third year.

Placements are real, paid jobs in a wide variety of organisations in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors and offer you a valuable opportunity to experience first-hand how business and management concepts are applied in practice, and to give you direct exposure to real issues in the workplace. It can also be done abroad.

The placement year is a vital part of your learning and will add significantly to your personal development, self-confidence, planning, communication and business acumen skills. Statistics show that students who have undertaken a placement year benefit from a better graduate job, higher graduate starting salary and a better degree outcome.

In a competitive graduate market, valuable experience and employability skills gained from a year’s work placement will differentiate you from the thousands of other graduates seeking work.

We find that students return from their placement year with their confidence and personal skills enhanced and ready to implement their focused plan for the future.

The School of Management has an excellent network of organisations that offer placements including:

• IBM
• Vauxhall
• NHS
• GE Money
• Arris (formerly PACE)
• Enterprise Rent A Car
• Cummins
• Peugeot

Together we ensure your placement is appropriately challenging and that you can make a real and positive impact on the business. Your experience will be monitored and assessed through a credit bearing work based learning module that will count towards your final degree.

This module is portfolio based and will develop your ability to reflect on professional work related experiences and recognise the impact on your career development planning. Placements are not guaranteed, and students will have to invest considerable time and effort in their 2nd year in securing one, with the support of the dedicated Careers team.

The programme opens up a wide range of career paths. Recent graduates have progressed into roles such as:

• Accountant
• Account Manager
• Digital Analyst
• Financial Support Adviser 
• Graduate Trainee
• Programmer