Accounting and Finance

Accounting and finance sits at the heart of how organisations understand and manage their economic reality. Accounting provides the language of business, recording, summarising and reporting financial transactions in ways that give decision-makers the information they need. Finance takes a forward-looking perspective, concerned with how capital is raised and deployed, how risk is managed and how financial value is created over time.

Together they form a discipline that is relevant to every sector and organisation in the economy and that opens one of the widest range of career doors of any degree.

At the University of Bedfordshire, this four-year programme includes a foundation year, providing supported academic preparation before you progress to degree-level study, making it a genuine route into the profession for those who may not have the entry profile for a standard three-year degree. You will study financial reporting, management accounting, taxation, corporate finance, investment analysis, auditing and the regulatory environment that governs financial professionals. The programme is designed to build the knowledge base required for the professional accountancy examinations of the major professional bodies, meaning that many modules map to the syllabi of qualifications such as the ACA, ACCA and CIMA and may earn you exemptions from certain papers.

Accountancy is one of the few professions where a degree provides a direct route to professional qualification, and many graduates use the degree as the first stage of a longer professional journey. The foundation year extends the overall programme to four years but significantly broadens access to a high-value qualification.

Graduates go on to careers as accountants, auditors, financial analysts, management accountants, tax specialists and finance managers across the full range of sectors and organisations. The programme also provides a foundation for further study at masters level in accounting, finance or related fields.