About Graduate Degrees in Forensic Accounting
Graduate programs in forensic accounting help students prepare to deal with white collar crime. This always involves money. It is usually hidden in the accounting books at a company. People commonly call it fraud. Just as forensic medicine is used to deduce how a person died from the evidence left in the body, forensic accounting uses financial statements to investigate fraud.
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Identification
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You can obtain a graduate certificate in forensic accounting as a stand-alone course of study or as a part of a master's degree in business leadership. It is a one year program offered at many graduate schools with four basic courses that teach students how to identify, collect, and analyze evidence of fraud.
History
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Prior to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, forensic accounting was not such an emphasis. This law put a lot of new internal accounting reporting requirements in place especially for publicly-traded companies. It was passed to prevent accounting scandals such as the ones that happened in the early part of the decade at Tyco and Enron.
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Significance
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The new reporting requirements added to what accountants had to be trained to do especially because they are the first line of fraud prevention in publicly-traded companies. Accounting education had to develop graduate courses that would teach accountants to look for evidence of misrepresentation of the facts on a company's financial statements. This also involved finding and collecting information to show whether financial transactions had been reconstructed after the fact to hide the truth. Finally, the courses had to teach students about the methods that white collar criminals use when they are involved in tax evasion.
Features
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Usually certificate courses in forensic accounting comprise four courses. The first course is an overview of the principles of forensic accounting and fraud. The second course teaches accountants how to detect and prevent fraudulent financial statements. The third course teaches interview techniques and introduces students to the laws related to fraud. The fourth course gives students technical training about investigating fraud using the computer. All of the courses are concerned with helping graduate students in accounting know how to comply with the more stringent laws in place now under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Types
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Many schools offer this graduate certificate program in forensic accounting on a schedule that makes it accessible to professionals who are already in full time jobs. The classes are often held in the evenings or on weekends. Most even have a program where the courses are intensive, meeting for four-hour blocks or for entire weekends to shorten the actual in-class time they involve. Some universities incorporate this certificate course in a master's program like the MS in Leadership offered by Northeastern University or the Forensic Accounting MBA offered by Franklin University. Only a few schools offer forensic accounting on the undergraduate level. They include Carlow University and Champlain College.
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