Top universities for accounting & finance

The University of Chicago’s accounting and finance faculty are based at its Booth School of Business, which offers PhD and MBA programmes.

Relevant research interests include external financial reporting and disclosure issues, securities regulation, international financial reporting and the role of accounting in contracting.  

The University of Oxford doesn’t have an undergraduate course specifically in accounting and/or finance, though these subjects are available within the economics and management degree.

It offers several different master's programmes in finance, either singly or in combination with a second subject, and its Saïd Business School is home to internationally renowned research groups focusing on both accounting and finance.

Stanford’s business school is quite simply called the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Accounting research at the school has focused on issues relating to financial reporting and management control, including accounting-based valuation strategies and the design of performance measurement and incentive systems.

Meanwhile major topics for finance research at Stanford include asset pricing and corporate finance, including analysis of investment decisions.

MIT, one of the world's top universities overall, also has its own world-renowned business school – the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Again, the university’s accounting and finance programmes are concentrated at graduate level, with research groups dedicated to both fields. Relevant research centres include the laboratory for Financial Engineering, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, and MIT Center for Digital Business.

Harvard University is well respected across many different subject areas and the prestigious Harvard Business School is undoubtedly among the university’s most famous schools.

Research at the school’s accounting and management research unit includes a focus on the use of performance measurement systems to help businesses communicate with external investors, improve resource allocation and strategy, and build accountability.