Alumni are encouraged to take elective courses at reduced tuition rates and to participate in continuing education classes offered during alumni weekend each fall. Because of the integrative nature of the core curriculum, every student is required to take all first-year courses. No exceptions are permitted. Accounting is the language of business, with its own vocabulary and rules. This course focuses on the need for users of accounting information to understand accounting systems.
Accounting is studied both as a method of communication and as a decision-making tool.
Topics include the structure of conventional accounting, measurement of cost and value, processing accounting data, financial analysis, control and using accounting information in planning. A variety of quantitative techniques, including decision analysis, probability theory, sampling, statistical inference, time-series analysis, regression, and mathematical programming, are explored as aids to make managerial decisions in the face of varying degrees of uncertainty. Students develop and refine the quantitative skills necessary to effectively address problems they will encounter throughout the curriculum and later in their careers. This course introduces the analytical skills and managerial insights of microeconomics. Recurrent themes are efficient resource allocation and value maximizing marginal decisions under asymmetric information.