Master of Science in Accounting

The MSA provides a pathway for students who wish to obtain the additional semester hours required for certified public accountant (CPA) certification.

The core of the Master of Science in Accounting is designed around the topics covered by the CPA exam. The curriculum combines a solid foundation in best accounting practices with a complementary set of graduate management courses designed to prepare early career professionals to be effective managers. This 32-credit program emphasizes cases to drive the acquisition and application of knowledge necessary to exercise professional skills and develop a foundation of both advanced accounting and managerial skills.

Learning Goals and Objectives

Technical Skills

• Communication - The ability to articulate and deliver financial information and recommendations in both written and oral presentation format.
• Tools - The ability to create, use, understand, and interpret the results of computerized databases and spreadsheet analyses (and tax software, for tax courses).

Environment

• Ethics - The ability to recognize an ethical issue and analyze the potential outcomes for the relevant constituencies and make a reasoned judgment.
• Law - The ability to understand statutory provisions governing business processes and to understand laws governing auditor conduct.
• Client - The ability to understand varying client environments and identify inherent risks, appropriate controls, and control risks including risks from industry, regulatory, and environmental sources.

Knowledge Application

• Problem Definition - The ability to identify a key problem in an accounting context (or tax context, for tax courses; or accounting and tax context, for ethics courses).
• Analysis - The ability to interpret accounting standards (or tax laws, for tax courses) and analyze information to draw reasoned, ethical conclusions.
• Decision-Making - The ability to make ethical choices among one or more alternatives with the intention of moving toward some desired state of affairs in an accounting context (or tax context, for tax courses).

Admission Requirements

The MSA program requires an undergraduate accounting background (i.e., an accounting major or having earned a minimum of 15 credits in accounting), including the following courses:

• Introduction to Accounting
• Intermediate Accounting I
• Intermediate Accounting II
• Cost Accounting
• Taxes (completion of a Tax course in the United States)