After earning a bachelor's degree, students may choose to earn a postgraduate diploma rather than a masters degree.
Postgraduate diplomas or certificates are educational programs that fall between the first degree (bachelor) and a graduate degree (master). Postgraduate diploma or certificate programs are most prevalent outside of the United States in countries like the U.K., Australia, India, South Africa and Canada.
The postgraduate diploma programs in finance build upon the undergraduate business and economic education of students and trains them in specialized areas of finance such as public finance and risk assessment. Some schools plan their postgraduate diploma curriculum to be identical to the first year of the master of arts in finance. This facilitates a transition from earning the postgraduate diploma to earning the master's degree, should the student decide to do so at some future point.
Financial Markets
Basic financial market classes introduce students to the structure of their own domestic markets. They will need to know how the market is segmented into industries and sectors. They also learn how these domestic sectors interact with the corresponding sectors of overseas markets.
Classes of this type generally require that students trace the stock prices of a few companies within the student's domestic market. Towards the end of the course they will then analyze the price movement and try to explain the reasons behind the stock's behavior.
Finance Law and Ethics
As future finance practitioners, students will need a clear understanding of the laws that constrain their professional conduct. Courses in finance law will help students to maintain a high ethical standard for their clients.
Courses in finance law generally cover the body of law covering finance practices with in their own country, the framework of regulatory bodies that generate relevant regulations and specify illegal conduct. Ethics courses are also required to provide students with a code of values and conduct to which they can refer when unforeseen situations arise.
Risk Assessment
As companies grow and expand, they are always on the lookout for new business locations and investment opportunities. Sometimes these locations carry the risk of loss of funds or damage to infrastructure.
Operational risk are those factors that lower the expected return on an investment or cause there to be no return at all. These risks can come in the form of financial mismanagement or political strife. The objectives of courses in operational risk is to teach students identify such risks and gauge their likelihood of occurring. Not that students are expected to avoid risk completely, for this would lead to no gain at all in the long run.
Valuation
In assessing whether a company is worthy of investment, students need to understand valuation. This is a method where the company's equity and assets are measured, usually for the purposes of ensuring that these figures exceed the firm's liabilities.
Undergraduate finance programs have valuation classes, but postgraduate diploma programs typically also have a valuation course because some people are coming to the program from majors other than finance such as marketing, business law or economics. There are generally also advanced valuation classes for those who want to study the topic in depth.
Tags: postgraduate diploma, Courses finance, diploma programs, finance such, have valuation, postgraduate diploma, postgraduate diploma programs