Accounting or Economics at University? | How I chose between the two degrees 📜

In this video I discuss how I chose between Accounting and Economics when I was selecting what course I was going to do at university. I also provide the questions you want to be asking yourself when you're making the same choice.

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📝Brief script:
I remember having to choose between an accounting and economics degree when I was doing my A levels and applying for different universities. It was certainly something I thought about for a very long time because I knew it was a really important decision and one that would influence my university experience massively.

In this video I’m going to discuss some of the factors I considered when making that decision and some additional factors I wish I’d thought about before. Having done an Economics degree  and then having gone on to do a Chartered accountancy qualification at one of the Big 4 accounting firms, I feel I’ve got a good idea of how you should approach this important decision. Clearly, there is no definitive answer to this question as everyone is different in terms of their interests and career ambitions and in this video I’m going to provide you with some of the questions you want to be asking yourself when you’re thinking about this choice between the two subjects.

To provide some background, I was studying business & econ, maths and politics at A levels and I knew I wanted to do a degree which was related to businesses and commerce, in a very broad sense. The two choices I was looking at were accounting and economics and at that stage, I wasn’t as aware of what exactly was covered on those courses and had very little clue about what specific careers these degrees would lead to. After doing plenty of research online and talking to people who had done those courses I started to realise what exactly those courses were about and what opportunities they would lead to further down the line.

So let’s look at accounting first, from my perspective, you really should be very confident that you want to become an accountant once you complete your degree as that is the most common and the easiest career path that the course leads onto. Most of the modules on the course will be designed to teach you the fundamentals of accounting and there is an important benefit of doing this course at university if you want to then go onto do an accountancy qualification with an accountancy firm on a training contract. This benefit is that you receive certain exemptions from exams on the accountancy qualification as you’re deemed to have covered those topics during your accountancy university course.

Now, there will be some individuals that complete their accountancy degree at university and don’t want to qualify as a chartered accountant or a management accountant. They still have the possibility to go into other finance roles such as investment management or tax advisory etc. They can make this switch as they’ll build up transferable skills on their undergraduate degree such as attention to detail and a fundamental knowledge of business processes etc, which are certainly valued in the job market.

Because of this, I think that you should be fairly certain in your mind that you want to become an accountant in your career if you are to choose an accounting degree, and if you change your mind later, there is that fallback of going into other careers in Finance, but the course certainly pushes you down the chartered accountancy route. So that’s what you need to keep in mind if you are thinking about going for an accountancy degree. The core focus of the course is to provide you with strong technical accounting skills.

Now, Economics is a much broader subject in general terms and the modules that you’ll do on the course will cover a wide variety of topics such as macroeconomics, microeconomics, monetary policy, econometrics and a lot more. The degree will equip you with strong analytical, numeracy and problem solving skills and it provides a strong understanding of economic concepts and principles. Compared to an accounting degree, it doesn’t focus in on a particular technical skill set but provides a wider overview of techniques.

Given all this, I think for those people that are less sure about what career path they want to go down after graduation, choosing Economics makes much more sense over accounting as it positions you well to get into a variety of different careers once you’ve graduated. It provides you with plenty of highly valued skills, like the ones I highlighted before, and it is very well respected by employers.

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Видео Accounting or Economics at University? | How I chose between the two degrees 📜 канала Finance Unboxed