What Can You Do With an Accounting Degree?

Florida Tech June 11, 2014

What can you do with an accounting degree? Pete calculates the possible career opportunities for students majoring in accounting in today’s installment of, “What can I do with THAT degree?”

You’re precious, you’re thorough and you’re good with numbers — then you might want to earn an accounting degree. Believe it or not, there are actually many different types of accountants out there in the world, and I’m here to tell you about a few of them. But before I get into “what can you do with an accounting degree?” let’s define what accounting really is …

Accountants (as well as auditors) are the people who prepare and analyze financial records for a multitude of different reasons. They pour over every little detail in order to ensure the records they’re examining are not only accurate, but that they are being handled properly and on time. On an overall scale, accountants help companies run as financially efficient as possible.

So let’s get to it, what can you do with an accounting degree?

Well, you could become a public accountant, or the person who first comes to mind when you think of the word “accountant.” A public accountant is an accountant in its most general sense, typically working for corporations, governments and individuals and examining public financial documents to improve overall accuracy and efficiency.

Management accountants are a little more specialized, however. While a lot of the day-to-day tasks between the two positions are very much the same, each performs those tasks for a specific purpose. While a public accountant examines public reports, a management accountant examines private reports specifically for internal use for business managers. Examples of these private reports include anything from budgeting to performance evaluations.

The final career I’ll be throwing at you today is very different, because an accounting degree actually opens up the possibility for careers outside of “accounting.” I’m talking about auditors! In this case, internal auditors. These are the people who check for mismanagement of an organization’s financial assets. When they’re not playing the role of inspector, internal auditors also determine new ways to improve the general processes for discovering and eliminating wasted money and fraud.

There it is, an entire career outlook for an accounting graduate in a nutshell. I am, of course, saying “in a nutshell” because there are so many more careers out there and will probably even more created by the time you graduate and are ready to burst onto the job scene. So while you may be asking yourself now, “What can you do with an accounting degree?” I assure you, you won’t be asking that question after graduation. Happy career hunting!