Curriculum
Our programme offers 2 concentrations, Professional Accountancy and Accounting Analytics.
Full-time
Professional Accountancy (PA)
Select 7 Core Courses (21 Required Credits) + 5 Elective Courses with at least 3 PA Elective Courses (15 Credits)
Accounting Analytics (AA)
Select 7 Core Courses (21 Required Credits) + 5 Elective Courses with at least 3 AA Elective Courses (15 Credits)
Pre-term Courses (Non-Credit Bearing)
TO GET PREPARED AT THE BEGINNING
Accounting
This course presents an introduction to accounting. It emphasizes basic accounting concepts and principles and aims to develop students' abilities to understand accounting information, to prepare accounting records and to use the accounting information in planning and supporting business management and control. Major topics to be taught include role and purpose of accounting; basic accounting principles, accounting cycles, accounting for current assets, current liabilities, and property, plant and equipment, and accounting for corporations.
Statistical Analysis
This course introduces students with statistical methods used in making decisions and inferences in the business world. Major topics to be taught include probability, descriptive statistics, data collection, sampling, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, correlation and regression. Application to business problems will be emphasized.
Marketing Management
This course aims to provide a critical awareness of the role of marketing in business. This course therefore provides students with concepts, theories and knowledge in marketing techniques, which increase students' understanding and awareness of marketing environment, enhance students' ability in analyzing local and global marketing issues and develop students' marketing skills and techniques for the application in real world market
Business Management
This course introduces students with concepts and theories of organization and management that will help the student to understand and analyze various management functions. This course provides students with different schools of thought, the role of production, operation, human resource management in business entity and the behavioral, functional and motivational aspects of management. Management is practical issue. Within the course, students are expected to integrate their own experience, knowledge and observations for the application in the given case studies or in real-life scenarios.
Information Management
This course aims to emphasize the importance of the information in business entity and how information management and technologies improve the competitive advantage of the business entity. It provides students with the role of electronic commerce in today's business environment, the understanding of the nature and value of information system and information management, the process of system development, and the knowledge in information technology applications.
Business Economics
This course presents an introduction to the principles of microeconomics and macroeconomics. Major topics to be taught include basic economic concepts, supply and demand, cost and production theories,competitive oligopolistic and monopolistic market, government intervention in market economy, introductory issues to game theory and informational economics, measurement of national output and income; unemployment and inflation and other fundamental principles in microeconomics and macroeconomics.
Core Courses (Total 7 Courses/ 21 Major Credits)
TO CONSTRUCT SOLID FOUNDATION FOR YOU TO
FACE THE COMPLEX GLOBAL CHALLENGES
China Economic Law and Market Regulations
This course introduces the ethical and legal frameworks of business and explains the laws that define and govern businesses and corporations in China.
China Tax Framework
This course aims to give students an overview of China's taxation policies, principles and practices. It examines the general tax system and the rules on various categories of taxes in China.
Financial Management
This course identifies, examines and analyses the major financial decisions made by firms in the contemporary business environment. Topics include asset valuation, investment decisions, analysis of risk, financial planning, dividend policy, working capital management, sources of long-term financing and the cost of capital, and the financial mix for firms.
Audit and Assurance
This course provides students with comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of auditing and other assurance services. It first covers the regulatory framework of auditing, the relevant concepts, principles, objectives and ethical requirements of audit and assurance services and the standard procedures and methods of investigation. This course further examines various advanced topics including advanced auditing techniques and contemporary issues in auditing. Lastly, this course emphasizes ethical considerations in accounting and auditing and, in particular, the code of ethics for professional accountants and the ethical standard for Auditors.
Managerial Accounting
This course covers the basics of cost and management accounting including concepts, techniques and applications. Topics include cost behaviour and classification, cost-volume-profit analysis, product and process costing, decision-making, pricing decisions, variance analysis, capital budgeting, and measuring and managing customer relationships, process performance, and strategic performance.
Advanced Corporate Accounting
This course aims to equip students with comprehensive skills in more complex issues in financial accounting with particular focus on group accounting. Other topics include effects of changes in foreign exchange rates, share-based payments, income tax, and accounting for hedging.
Corporate Accounting
This course aims to provide students with an in-depth understanding of financial accounting. It intends to form the basis for further studies in Advanced Corporate Accounting. Topics include the conceptual framework of financial accounting, financial statements, cash and receivables, inventories, revenue recognition, property, plant and equipment, intangible assets, financial assets, liabilities, equity, pension and postretirement benefits, ratio analysis and an introduction to financial statement analysis.
Elective Courses (Select 5 Courses/ 15 Major Credits)
TO FURTHER YOUR RESEARCH INTEREST, TO EXPLORE BEST PRACTICE, TO CHALLENGE YOUR WAY OF THINKING
AND TO IMPROVE YOUR ABILITY TO APPLY ACCOUNTING METHODS TO LEAD AND MAKE SMART DECISIONS
Accounting for Value
Value investing is an investment strategy that involves seeking out stocks that are priced below their intrinsic value. This course aims to provide students with detailed examination of the value-based approach to investment including practical and applied concepts to value investing, techniques for assessing value and designing and structuring value-based portfolios. The course places emphasis on how to handle accounting information and how to infer value from such accounting information in value investing. Students will get hands-on experience in accounting for value using most up-to-date information.
Financial Markets and Instruments
This course aims to cover the composition of financial markets, the role financial markets and institutions play in the modern business environment and the common instruments and products in financial transactions with a particular focus on the risk-neutral pricing of securities and fundamental analysis of stocks.
Accounting and Financial Strategies
Accounting and Financial Strategies Based on the accounting and financial management knowledge built up in the core courses, this course further examines how accounting and financial information are used in real-life company for guiding important managerial decisions, including but not limited to financial and operational strategies, working capital management, corporate financing, corporate governance and mergers and acquisitions. With hands-on use of cases and real-life examples, this course is beneficial for students seeking careers in financial analysis or management consulting that require the use of accounting and financial information as an input to decision-making.
Earning Quality Analysis
Based on the financial reporting knowledge built up in the core courses, this course develops a framework of fundamental analysis for equity investments with emphasis on the analysis of earnings quality. The primary objective is to gain an in-depth understanding of accounting information and how to use it intelligently to undertake business analysis for investment. Such knowledge is important for consultants, analysts, and other users of financial statement information. The course focuses on implementation and practical uses. The methods introduced will be examined in detail and applied in cases involving real-world listed companies. Topics include analysis of assets, liabilities, owner and non-owner financing, analysis of leases, pensions and taxes, profitability and credit analysis and many more.
Taxation Management in Greater China: A Global Perspective
This course aims to provide students with knowledge of the key concepts of international taxation management and the international aspects of the taxation in greater China. Following the trend of globalization in international economies, this course will put emphasis on taxation issues for local enterprises with global investment and foreign-invested enterprises in greater China. Topics including transfer pricing, tax treaties, cross border activities and international tax planning considerations are also covered in this course.
Financial Shenanigans in the Chinese Capital Markets
This course aims to broaden students' awareness of the various ways in which accounting practices can be mis-used to distort the financial position of a firm presented in its financial statements. It explores commonly used techniques for earnings management such as discretionary accruals and financial window-dressing and different discernment methods for their detection. Real-life case examples drawn from the Chinese Capital markets are used as the major teaching aids in this course. Through classroom case discussions and presentations, students will gain practical insights into accounting gimmicks and frauds in Chinese capital markets.
Directed Research in Accounting
This course prepares students to engage in productive and original research in the broad area of accounting under the instruction of leading professors.
Corporate Governance and Social Responsibility in China
This course aims to develop a sound understanding of the underlying concepts and theories of corporate governance and corporate social responsibilities, which are both indispensable in today's business environment. It explores the use of different internal control strategies and corporate governance practices and the integration of ethics in achieving efficiency, effectiveness and economy in operations and in complying with legal, regulatory, social and corporate oversight requirements with a particular focus issues in China.
Contemporary Issues in Chinese Financial Markets (Practitioner Workshop)
The course aims to broaden students' perspective on the many contemporary issues in Chinese financial development. Practitioner speakers will work with students on both classroom case presentations and projects. By offering students opportunities to integrate theories with existing finance practices, the course helps students gain practical insights in the latest trends in corporate finance and investment management in China.
Business Valuation and Financial Statement Analysis
This course introduces the valuation techniques in the fields of corporate finance, equity research, fund management and strategy consulting employed by analysts and investors while valuing stocks and firms. It explores how to use financial statements to develop an in-depth fundamental analysis of the business which can be applied to a range of investment and strategic decisions. Specific topics covered will include models of shareholder value, financial diagnosis, and future earnings and cash flow forecast. Much of the course's emphasis is on case studies involving listed companies.
Text Analytics in Financial Market
Thorough examination of huge amounts of text data is known to be a difficult task which requires the understanding of natural language processing. This course aims to provide students fundamental techniques and major algorithms used for text processing and retrieval to extract useful information to support decision making. After taking the course, students will know how to independently obtain and analyze huge amounts of unstructured textual data to generate the business insights for companies.
Forensic and Forecasting Analytics
This course explores the use of financial and non-financial data for solving problems in financial accounting, managerial accounting, audit, internal control and corporate governance contexts. Students will gain exposure to different advanced data analytics techniques and predictive models such as text analytics, neural networks and deep learning to detect irregularities, anomalies and potential fraud in accounting data. Students will gain knowledge and hands-on experience in applying these techniques to make predictions by generating value from accounting data.
Directed Research in Accounting Analytics
This course prepares students to engage in productive and original research in the area of accounting analytics under the instruction of leading professors.
Data Mining and Business Analytics
This course introduces fundamental concepts, technologies, and applications of business analytics using Big Data. It covers the state-of-the-art topics in Big Data including data collection, data storage and processing, data mining, predictive analytics, and cloud computing.
Business Valuation and Financial Statement Analysis
This course introduces the valuation techniques in the fields of corporate finance, equity research, fund management and strategy consulting employed by analysts and investors while valuing stocks and firms. It explores how to use financial statements to develop an in-depth fundamental analysis of the business which can be applied to a range of investment and strategic decisions. Specific topics covered will include models of shareholder value, financial diagnosis, and future earnings and cash flow forecast. Much of the course's emphasis is on case studies involving listed companies.
Accounting Data Strategy and Visualization
The growing volume of both structured and unstructured data has pushed forward a more data-driven form of decision making. Future accountants need to be able to collect and work with data. This course aims to first introduce various accounting and financial research datasets and to provide students various quantitative analysis techniques in developing analytical data models to support decision-making. With the information developed from data modeling, it is crucial to communicate practical implications of quantitative analyses to any kind of audience member. This course aims to further provide an introduction as well as a hands-on experience in data visualization and visual analytics to help summarize large amount of data effectively. Students will learn to combine analytic and interactive visualization approaches and use them to demonstrate or provide insights into real-world problems and situations
