Programme Specification: Diploma in Accounting and Finance

1. Awarding Body / LSE
2. Details of accreditation by a professional/statutory body
eg ESRC; BPS etc) / Recognised for individual exemptions by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (‘ACCA’).
3. Name of final award / Diploma
4. Programme Title / Accounting and Finance
5. Duration of the Course / Full-time 9 months
6. Based in the Department/Institute: / Department of Accounting
7. Relevant QAA subject benchmark statements / N/A
8. UCAS Code/application code / N4ED
9. First written/Last amended / 6th Nov 2001/ November 2012
  1. The programme aims to:

offer the following benefits:
  • The opportunity to study in one of the most highly-rated Departments in the subject area in the world, both for its research and its institutional links and for its research-led teaching;
  • Exposure to world-class social scientists, business leaders, politicians, and modern thinkers who visit and/or teach at LSE;
  • The opportunity to acquire a solid foundation if students have little or no background in accounting or finance, or extend their knowledge in this area within a flexible programme;
  • The opportunity to subsequently join MSc programmes in the Department (subject to satisfactory performance in the Diploma programme and an appropriate selection of courses);
  • The opportunity to prepare for careers in the fields of finance and accounting, consulting, and general management.

11. Programme outcomes: knowledge and understanding; skills and other attributes
Knowledge and understanding: At the end of the programme, all students will have a thorough understanding of the key aspects of:
Principles of finance
or
Corporate finance and financial markets
Management accounting and financial accounting: decisions, control, reporting and disclosure
or
Financial accounting, analysis and valuation
and/or
Managerial accounting
and/or
Management accounting, financial managementand organizational control
plus will have selected from:
a range of more specialist courses in aspects of accounting, auditing and reporting, international accounting and finance, valuation and security analysis, and portfolio management or related courses in business, economics, econometrics, operational research, Law, organisational theory or in other social science disciplines
Subject specific skills: At the end of the programme, and to the appropriate extent indicated by their level of award, students should demonstrate:
  • appropriate ability to communicate knowledge and understanding of several of the major contexts within which accounting operates (both outside and within organisations), based on a critical
evaluationof related theoretical and conceptual frameworks and of empirical evidence as to its effects;
  • appropriate ability to communicate knowledge and understanding of, and appropriate ability to use and critically evaluate, current and major alternative technical languages and practices of accounting, together with appropriate ability to apply them;
  • appropriate ability to record and summarize financial data and prepare outline accounting reports suitable for internal management reporting and external financial statements;
  • appropriate ability to manipulate financial and other numerical data and appropriate understanding of and ability to apply mathematical and statistical concepts;
  • appropriate ability to analyse business strategies and activities and perform relevant financial analyses and projections in appropriate contexts of planning, decision making and control; and to recognize the limitations of these techniques;
  • appropriate ability to communicate knowledge and understanding of financial management, risk and the operation of financial markets, based on critical evaluation of theories and empirical evidence.
Cognitive abilities and non-subject specific skills: At the end of the programme, students should be able to demonstrate:
  • appropriate ability to evaluate arguments and evidence critically;
  • appropriate ability to locate, extract, analyse, and draw reasoned conclusions from multiple sources—including electronic sources—of appropriate literature and relevant data;
  • appropriate ability to acknowledge and reference sources;
  • appropriate capacities for independent and self-managed learning;
  • appropriate use of communications and information technology, such as spreadsheets, word-processing and on-line databases;
  • appropriate communication skills such as ability to present quantitative and qualitative information, together with analysis, argument and commentary, in an appropriate form;
  • ability to work in groups and other appropriate inter-personal skills, including oral and written presentation skills.
Information relating to careers can be accessed here
12. Teaching, learning and assessment strategies to enable outcomes to be achieved and demonstrated
Teaching and learning strategies:
This programme offers research-led teaching to provide a conversion course for students with little or no background in accounting or finance, such as students with undergraduate degrees in arts, economics, law, business, science, or engineering. It also provides students with a more thorough background in accounting and finance the opportunity to extend their knowledge and understanding in areas of special interest within a flexible programme.
Students acquire their detailed knowledge and understanding of the course, and their subject specific skills, through a combination of lectures, problem classes and progression to guided independent study, reinforced by the opportunity to meet teachers and their supervisors one-to-one in office hours.
Course reading lists include not only leading textbooks but references to current research literature and primary sources, including relevant examples from current practice, official and professional policy documents, websites and other electronic data sources.
Academic teaching staff are leading-edge researchers who give students an insight into current thinking and recent developments in their fields. Several teachers and supervisors are also involved in policy advice and formation and give students insights into real-world developments in accounting and finance and the forces that shape them.
Professionals working in the field contribute as part-time lecturers and class teachers
Students have the opportunity to acquire hands-on experience of IT as well as familiarity with electronic datasources and databases.
Assessment strategies:
Summative assessment of knowledge and understanding and of subject-specific skills is mostly through unseen examinations at the end of each year..
Formative assessment is through class assignments, including numerical and computer-based exercises, critical essays and commentaries, and individual and group presentations, for example on case studies and mini-projects or in ‘role-plays’.
Cognitive and non-subject specific skills are developed in parallel with the development of—and through the same teaching and assessment structures that are designed to achieve the appropriate levels of—the knowledge and understanding and subject specific skills described above.
The Diploma students are also encouraged to participate in the Departmental ‘postgraduate’ annual residential weekend for staff and students.
13. Programme structures and requirements, levels modules and awards.
See Diploma in Accounting and Finance programme regulations for further information.

Additional Information

14.Criteria for admission to the programme
  • Entrants should usually have a good upper second class honours degree (in any subject) from a UK university, or have reached a similar standard in an overseas degree;
  • Non-English speakers: also have to meet the School’s standard requirement for English language for all graduate programmes - IELTS 6.5 (at least 6.0 in each section) or 100 in the internet-based TOEFL (at least 21 in writing and 20 in the other three elements);
  • TheLSE Careers Centre website provides data on career destinations of LSE graduates.

15. Indicators of quality
  • Applications for places: 205 for 45 places in 2012;
  • RAE rating (2001): 5*A;
  • The Department is responsible for the management of the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation (‘CARR’);
  • The academic staff include several professionally-qualified accountants who hold or have held senior positions in their professional bodies;
  • A large proportion of the professors of accounting in the UK are former members of staff and/or former students of the department. Current and former members of staff, and/or former students, have won nearly all the awards for ‘Distinguished academic of the year’ awarded by the British Accounting Association (‘BAA’);
  • Professional Accreditation by ACCA;

16.Methods for evaluating and improving the quality and standard of teaching and learning
The Department’s additional quality evaluation procedures are coordinated through its Teaching Quality Enhancement Panel. Primary responsibility lies with individual course leaders, course lecturers, class teachers, and supervisors and their own self-evaluation is focussed primarily through the Department’s annual course reviews and peer-teaching observations, the TQARO student questionnaires and the School’s mentoring and staff appraisal processes. Other Departmental structures and processes include:
  • ad hoc reviews such as the recent review of the Diploma which has led to a clearer specification of the aims of the award for students from different undergraduate backgrounds and the designation and redesign of the financial reporting and management ‘conversion course’;
  • the annual Departmental Examination Sub-Board meetings and the External Examiners’ reports;
  • the termly Departmental meeting;
  • the responsibilities of the Programme Director for the Diploma programme;
  • student feedback and consultation through the Diploma staff-student committee (SSC).
School procedures include:
  • The Teaching and Learning Centre is available to monitor and observe teaching and offers constructive advice on how to improve the standard of teaching and quality;
  • The Teaching Learning and Assessment Committee which regulates all aspects of teaching quality;
  • Departmental TLAC review once every five years;
  • The Graduate Studies Sub-Committee which oversees all graduate programmes and ensures that significant changes to programmes and courses pass through a sequence of formal stages, so that curricular changes are appropriate and compatible with other developments.

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