What Courses Do I Take to Become an Accountant?

Video Transcript

"In this clip we're going to talk about the kinds of courses it takes to become an accountant. There's a couple of different things you can do to get an accounting degree. You can attend a community college for two years and get just an associates degree in business, and then transfer to a four year university. Or you can start out at a four year university and take your basic courses there and move up to your major level courses. One of the first courses that you'll take in order to become an accountant is just a basic financial accounting course. In this type of course you'll learn about debits and credits and just the basics of accounting and how accounting works and what kinds of things accountants do. After you finish your associates degree, what they'll do is take an intermediate accounting degree up in the upper level courses. This book is actually pretty big and is usually divided up into two different courses in Intermediate Accounting One where you just learn more about day to day accounting and in Intermediate Accounting Two where you might learn more about financial statements. Another type of course that you'll take because accounting does have to do with business is a management type course. In this type of course you learn about managing businesses, and what kinds of decisions managers make. Another type of course you might take is a cost accounting course, the kind of accounting used my manufacturing companies. And, you'll also need to learn about tax, 'cause there are some accountants that specialize in tax. You will probably take a tax course on corporations, partnerships, states and taxes just like this one. And you might also take an individual income tax class. And last but not last you'll probably take an auditing course. In fact you will have to take an auditing course. And auditing has to do with people who come out and look at the integrity of financial statements for private companies. This is what public accountants do and these kinds of courses will help you get to your four year degree as an accountant."