Program Objectives and Student Outcomes

Finance Program Learning Goals

The major objectives of the finance program are to provide a program of high-quality finance education that enables graduates to become contributing members to the finance community and to provide graduates with a foundation upon which continued life-long learning can be built. To meet these objectives, students graduating from the finance program should possess the following knowledge and skills.

Finance Program Student Outcomes

Discipline-Specific Knowledge:

• An understanding of the role of financial management in business firms and the essentials of corporate finance. Finance graduates should be able to apply the concept and mechanics of the time value of money, apply capital budgeting techniques, and apply the theory of capital structure to assess a firm’s leverage and the cost of capital.
• An understanding of the operation of security markets and the roles played by businesses and individual investors. Finance graduates should be able to apply valuation models to estimate the price of financial assets, measure risk and describe the risk-return tradeoff as expressed by the Capital Asset Pricing Model.
• An understanding of financial markets and institutions and their roles in businesses.
• An understanding of international financial management and risks involved in global business. Finance graduates should be able to apply different instruments to deal with exchange risk and markets imperfections while maximizing benefits from expanding to global markets.

Skills:

• Analytical Problem-Solving Skill: The analytical ability to develop and utilize accounting data, financial data, and other information to solve complex and unstructured business problems.
• Critical Thinking Skill: The ability to find evidence and viewpoints for finance-related issues and then to make rational assumptions, identify implications, and formulate conclusions.