MS in Accounting Course Offerings

This course reviews the advanced managerial accounting concepts and methods used in management decision-making. Major topics include comprehensive and complex systems of cost accumulation and capital budgeting. The course also integrates expanded economic analyses, quantitative methods, cost-volume-profit analysis, and profit performance.

This course is an overview of the accounting principles governing the preparation of financial statements, using United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Topics explored in this course include asset valuation, income determination, and consolidated financial statements of multinational corporations. The course reviews the analytical methods of working capital, statements of cash flows, techniques used in analyzing solvency, quality of earning, forecasting techniques, and methods of evaluating financial statements.

This course is an in-depth analysis of Accounting Information Systems (AIS) concepts. The objective is to evaluate how AIS tools are used to record, process, and analyze financial data; determine how best to integrate AIS tools and processes in a given organization; review and recommend controls to secure AIS applications and processes; and evaluate how technology can be used in AIS applications. Topics include: transactional processing concepts and core AIS transactional cycles; basic control frameworks used to secure AIS applications and processes; strategies for implementing or upgrading AIS applications; information technology and accounting standards; and e-commerce and e-business.

This course provides a detailed understanding of the gift, estate, and generation-skipping transfer tax laws. Students will focus on the procedural laws and practical applications of gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer tax laws by analyzing study problems after review and discussion of each code section. This will include the preparation of federal estate tax returns and federal gift tax returns.

This course focuses on the scope of accounting theory and practice with an emphasis on critical concepts and accounting-related assumptions. The historical development of accounting theory is reviewed. Significant emphasis is placed on the analysis and evaluation of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) as well as issues facing the accounting profession. The course involves an in-depth study of the content and implications of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) pronouncements. Considerable attention is given to regulatory bodies, and their influences, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Advanced auditing is the study of AICPA and Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) accounting standards. The course enables students to understand the philosophy and the overall audit environment and relate to the conventional framework and procedural aspect of auditing. Students are exposed to the growing use of statistical sampling and the use of computer applications in the audit process.

Specific topics include audit sampling for the test of control and substantive test of transactions, statistical vs. non-statistical sampling, information technology (IT) audit overview, legal and ethical issues for IT auditors, Fraud and Forensic Auditing, review of contingent liabilities, review of subsequent events, evidence accumulation, and issue of an audit report.

This course examines the international dimension of financial reporting and analysis. International Accounting is a rapidly expanding field and its importance has grown in conjunction with the trend towards globalization. The course equips students with the knowledge to deal with the global challenges of the twenty-first century that require accountants to be well-versed in issues of international financial reporting, harmonization, standardization, and consolidation of financial statements of multinational corporations.

This capstone course provides students with the opportunity to maximize their accounting, tax, and auditing skills to analyze and evaluate real-world situations. A strong emphasis is placed on conducting professional research. The work encompasses a semester long collaborative team project that address a real world scenario.

This course enables students to master modern portfolio theory by focusing on risk-return trade-off, investors’ risk preferences, portfolio optimization, and index models. It addresses the implications of portfolio theory for the equilibrium structure of expected rates of return on risky assets and covers other topics important for portfolio oversight, notably performance evaluation and active portfolio management.