Every business enterprise, NGO or government organization must be able to rely on financial information systems that gives management and external stakeholders insight into financial performance. In the Accounting and Control programme at VU Amsterdam, you will learn how to do this.
In the full-time one-year English-language MSc programme in Accounting and Control, you'll learn to create financial analyses and reports, how to interpret them, how to identify and assess opportunities for improvement, and how data technology can help. You will obtain the skills for presenting your analyses and reports to support management in making the right decisions, and you will learn about the impact of laws and regulations in the Netherlands or abroad.
Do you want to become an auditor at an accounting firm or instead become a business controller, financial manager or CFO at a company, government organization, or NGO? Or do you want to become a financial analyst at an investment bank? Then this is the most quick and efficient step you can take.
The programme is also an excellent preparation for postgraduate programmes that further specialize you to become a chartered accountant or business controller/CFO, among others.
Throughout the programme you will learn to consider issues in accounting and control at an advanced academic level, and you are encouraged to reflect on issues of responsibility for accounting information, including integrity, ethics and compliance.
The Master’s programme in Accounting and Control is offered in a full-time and a part-time version. The two versions are identical in terms of learning outcomes, course content and assessment, but may differ with respect to the scheduling and teaching formats. The full-time programme is taught in English. Class language in the part-time programme is mostly Dutch.
To break it down:
- You’ll take five mandatory courses:
- Accounting, Control and Society – An introductory course helping you to see how the many different aspects of the field relate to each other: financial and non-financial information; management, governance and accountability; information technology; and regulation and ethics. Learn to think about planning your own career.
- Corporate Reporting – Get up to speed in financial and non-financial reporting, and understand the current issues that reporting standards are trying to solve.
- Management Control – Understand how to design incentive systems that have the desired effect on employees. The course integrates general accounting principles with both an integrity/ethics component and an IT component.
- Data Analytics for Accounting and Control – Understand how information technology is changing accounting and develop hands-on skills in data analysis.
- Governance, Regulation and Compliance - Learn to navigate the complex regulatory context of accounting and control.
- You’ll take at least two electives. For example:
- Advanced Auditing – Learn to consider key issues in auditing practice, by drawing on a rich toolbox of theoretical insights.
- Making Sustainability Accountable – Explore how accounting and control tools help to translate planet-wide issues in sustainability into specific actions at the level of an individual business or other organization.
- You’ll also write your Master’s thesis and complete a portfolio of assignments aimed at developing professional skills .
The start date of the full-time programme is September 1st. The start dates of the part-time programme are September 1st and February 1st.
