Accounting and Finance (Industry)
Lancaster University
UCAS Code: N401 | Bachelor of Science (with Honours) - BSc (Hons)
Entry requirements
A level
Access to HE Diploma
International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme
with 16 points from the best 3 Higher Level subjects
Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma (first teaching from September 2016)
UCAS Tariff
We've calculated how many Ucas points you'll need for this course.
About this course
Why do some companies soar and others go bust? How can profits go up while the share price comes down? Accountancy gets to the heart of these questions. If you love numbers and variety and want a sound understanding of accounting and finance alongside workplace experience, this could be your ideal degree.
We encourage you to pursue your interests, develop your strengths, and move towards your ideal career. Your third year is spent on a paid placement in industry, which gives you the priceless opportunity to gain practical business skills and experience to add to the theory and academic skills obtained in the rest of your degree.
Accredited by British accountancy bodies, this four-year long degree provides graduates with exemptions from many core professional examinations. The ‘Professional Pathway’ within the degree even includes Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) exams. This means, on graduation you’ll be further along the Chartered Accountants route than many of your contemporaries.
In your first year, you’ll study accounting and finance using real-world data from actual companies. You will also discover more about economic issues such as inflation, costs and pricing. You will also get advice on how to build your CV.
Second year core subjects include auditing, financial accounting, risk, corporate finance and management accounting for business decisions. You can also select from courses such as law, management decision making and advanced finance topics like hedging.
Your third year is spent in industry. You’ll be supported in securing a UK placement, with previous students joining companies such as Deloitte, Lloyds Bank, PwC and Samsung. Roles on offer range from finance, auditing and accounting to operations, consulting and risk.
Your final year builds on this knowledge while offering specialist options such as ethics, investments and taxation.
Whether it’s a tech start-up or a multinational industrialist, every company needs an accountant. Your studies can also be a route into corporate finance and business. Many Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) began their careers as accountants.
The University will use all reasonable effort to support you to find a suitable placement for your studies. While a placement role may not be available in a field or organisation that is directly related to your academic studies or career aspirations, all placement roles offer valuable experience of working at a graduate level and gaining a range of professional skills.
If you are unsuccessful in securing a suitable placement for your third year, you will be able to transfer to the equivalent non-placement degree scheme and would continue with your studies at Lancaster, finishing your degree after your third year. The University offers a range of shorter placement and internship opportunities for which you would be welcome to apply.
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Tuition fees
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The Uni
Lancaster University
Accounting and Finance
What students say
We've crunched the numbers to see if overall student satisfaction here is high, medium or low compared to students studying this subject(s) at other universities.
How do students rate their degree experience?
The stats below relate to the general subject area/s at this university, not this specific course. We show this where there isn’t enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
Finance
Teaching and learning
Assessment and feedback
Resources and organisation
Student voice
Who studies this subject and how do they get on?
Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)
Accounting
Teaching and learning
Assessment and feedback
Resources and organisation
Student voice
Who studies this subject and how do they get on?
Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)
After graduation
The stats in this section relate to the general subject area/s at this university – not this specific course. We show this where there isn't enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
Business and management
What are graduates doing after six months?
This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.
Top job areas of graduates
Over 2,000 students graduated with a degree in finance in 2015, and a sign of the strength of the finance industry, numbers are on the up. Over half of finance graduates go into the finance industry, with accountancy and financial advice roles particularly popular. It's also quite common for finance graduates to go into jobs which require you to take more training and gain professional qualifications — finance graduates who take further study are more likely to be studying accountancy than finance. About a third of graduates start their careers in London - but Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham are other popular locations for finance graduates to work.
Accounting
What are graduates doing after six months?
This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.
Top job areas of graduates
You don't have to be an accountant if you take this degree, but over half of graduates take a look at the rewards on offer for accountancy trainees and go into the job. Many others go into other parts of the finance industry as advisors or book-keepers, and some go into management or marketing. London is very popular for accountancy graduates going into their first job, but it's also quite common to work in Scotland, with Glasgow a perennial hotbed of Scottish accountancy recruitment. If you want to find a job in finance as an accountancy graduates, recruitment agencies were particularly important last year, so try to get in touch with one as soon as you can to improve your chances.
What about your long term prospects?
Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.
Business and management
The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.
£25k
£31k
£36k
Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.
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This information comes from the National Student Survey, an annual student survey of final-year students. You can use this to see how satisfied students studying this subject area at this university, are (not the individual course).
This is the percentage of final-year students at this university who were "definitely" or "mostly" satisfied with their course. We've analysed this figure against other universities so you can see whether this is high, medium or low.
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This information is from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), for undergraduate students only.
You can use this to get an idea of who you might share a lecture with and how they progressed in this subject, here. It's also worth comparing typical A-level subjects and grades students achieved with the current course entry requirements; similarities or differences here could indicate how flexible (or not) a university might be.
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Post-six month graduation stats:
This is from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Survey, based on responses from graduates who studied the same subject area here.
It offers a snapshot of what grads went on to do six months later, what they were earning on average, and whether they felt their degree helped them obtain a 'graduate role'. We calculate a mean rating to indicate if this is high, medium or low compared to other universities.
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Graduate field commentary:
The Higher Education Careers Services Unit have provided some further context for all graduates in this subject area, including details that numbers alone might not show
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The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset combines HRMC earnings data with student records from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
While there are lots of factors at play when it comes to your future earnings, use this as a rough timeline of what graduates in this subject area were earning on average one, three and five years later. Can you see a steady increase in salary, or did grads need some experience under their belt before seeing a nice bump up in their pay packet?
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