BA in Accounting and Finance with Placement Year

Throughout the BA Accounting and Finance, you’ll study a breadth and depth of accounting and finance subjects giving you the opportunity to take your knowledge to a new level. Areas of study may include accounting information, the legal, regulatory and social context within which accounting operates.

What’s more, if you choose the relevant modules, you may gain exemption from some of the ACA, ACCA and CIMA examinations once you’ve completed your degree. Just another small step that will help make your way up the career ladder a little easier.

Flexibility – subject to optional module choice and successful completion of your first year – it may be possible to change your degree path to either Accounting and Management or Finance. (Students who require a Tier 4 visa will need to check this in advance with the Tier 4 regulations which are in place at the time).

Year 1

In the first year, compulsory modules will provide you with the key fundamentals to examine and evaluate modern financial markets. These include:

• Introduction to Financial Accounting
• Introduction to Management Accounting
• Foundations of Finance
• Introduction to Economics
• Quantitative Methods

A further optional module will be chosen from a range which has in the past include:

• Business Environment and Functions
• The Global Economy
• A foreign language

Year 2

In the second year, compulsory modules investigate:

• Auditing and Assurance
• Corporate Financial Reporting
• Corporate Finance
• Management Accounting

You also choose two optional modules from a selection which have in the past have covered, for example:

• Principles of Business Law
• Introduction to Taxation
• Macroeconomics and International Finance
• Microeconomics for Finance
• Introduction to Financial Econometrics
• Financial Markets and Institutions
• A foreign language

Year 3

All of our degrees offer you the option of spending your third year gaining practical experience on a business placement. Business placements are a great way to develop your employment marketability and to engage with employers early in their recruitment pipeline. Placement requires a minimum of forty weeks of work experience and the placement begins in the summer following completion of the second year, and this then becomes the third year of a four-year degree programme. This allows you to really explore and understand your job and to find out if the career or company is for you.

• You will develop your practical skills, confidence and maturity.
• You can focus on a specific career path -many employers recruit graduates from their placement programme.
• You will be able to contextualise your studies better, be more mature in your attitude to work.
• You may decide to draw on your working experiences and access a more fulfilling dissertation research subject.
• You will gain invaluable job search and graduate research skills by engaging in the competitive placement recruitment process.

To ensure you are getting the most out of your experience, we support your placement in a number of ways:

First Year Bootcamps and Workshops help you to develop your Placement Strategy and to identify and develop those skills and competencies that will be critical to ensure you are attractive to potential placement employers. These typically involve Employers, Placement Mentors and representatives from Colleges, Societies and the Volunteering Community in Durham.

Second Year Workshops support you through the placement application process and allow you to develop into a supportive student group to travel along the road of gaining a placement together. They enable you to get to know those students who will return with you in the fourth year. Workshops typically involve employers and former placement students.

The DUBS Placement Programme includes a series of employer-led events which take place throughout term 1 and 2 and is open to all first-year and second-year placement students. The skills sessions and networking events allow students to meet recruiters and develop essential employability skills as well as providing valuable insight into the recruitment process.

Placement Mentors: We have a mentorship scheme whereby former placement students share their experiences of the application process and placement with first and second-year students and those out on placement. If you become a placement mentor on your return to University you can continue to develop your interpersonal skills and slide back into your University life with another key role which may well develop a new sense of belonging as well as another valuable contribution to your CV.

Placement Tutors: Whilst you are on placement you are assigned a tutor who will visit you, liaise with your employer and ensure you gain the most from your experience.

The Business Placement year fees are set annually by the University.  For the definitive amount of the Business Placement year fees payable please contact our Placement Team.

*The offer of a place on a ‘with placement’ degree does not imply that Durham University Business School guarantees to find the student placement. The Business School, in association with the University, will assist students in finding and applying for placements, but it is the responsibility of the student to apply for and to obtain a placement (which is subject to approval by the Business School). In the event that a student is unable to obtain a placement, transfer to the equivalent ‘non-placement’ programme is guaranteed provided the student is eligible to transfer on academic grounds. In line with Home Office rules, students from outside the EU will transfer onto the ‘with business placement’ programme only once they have successfully secured a placement (normally at the end of their second year of study). Therefore due to visa requirements, we recommend that international students interested in the business placement year as part of their degree apply for this programme when making their application to us via UCAS.

Year 4

Moving to a more research-led teaching orientation in the fourth year, you are required to produce a double module Dissertation in any of the accounting and finance areas, such as financial accounting, management accounting, auditing or finance. Additionally, you will study two compulsory modules exploring:

• Financial Planning and Control
• Contemporary Issues in Accounting

And choose two modules from a large selection covering business and finance options. Subjects in previous years have included, for example:

• Corporate Governance
• Security Investment Analysis
• International and Multinational Finance
• Financial Engineering
• Behavioural Finance
• Corporate Responsibility
• Financial Econometrics
• Strategic Management
• Islamic Economics and Finance
• A foreign language

We review course structures and core content (in light of e.g. external and student feedback) every year and will publish finalised core requirements for 2019 entry from September 2018.