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ONCAMPUS Experts Talk: MSc and BSc Finance at Aston

Dr Diya L, Senior Teaching Fellow in Finance and Programme Director MSc Finance, Aston University:

So welcome, everyone. I am Diya. I am a Senior Teaching Fellow in Finance with Aston and I'm also the Programme Director for the MSc in Finance. So today we're going to talk about two of our degrees, which is a Bachelor's in Finance and the Master's in Finance. But really, we want to talk about Aston as a University and how it prepares students for employability for all the graduate roles that they're going to take up once they finish their degree. Aston has partners all over the world. Students get an opportunity to study abroad for one semester or a year. Now, what that allows them to do is they're getting two degrees essentially at the price of one and this is open to all our students.

Now, five years ago, using Excel was the gold standard. So when our students graduated, all they were being asked was, can you use Excel to analyse data, to sort out data, to make sense of data? And our students said, yes, but the industry is moving so fast, it's not enough anymore. Excel is not enough anymore and therefore we are upgrading our Finance programmes to include computer software like R or Python or Stata or eViews or Data Stream. So when our students graduate, they can put on their CV. Yeah, we know how to use Excel. That's fine but you know what we can do coding as well and we know how to make those financial decisions using sophisticated industry software. There is something known as the Bloomberg Market Concepts certificate. It shows that students are comfortable with extracting data from Bloomberg and being able to make financial decisions out of it. This normally costs $250. For our students that is completely free
because we have access to Bloomberg.

So the BSc Finance, it has five professional affiliations and exemptions. Academic qualifications, unfortunately, are not enough anymore. We want our students to be competitive, which means that when they come out with an MSc, we want to make sure that they're also getting professional accreditations at the same time. Now the BSc Finance is a three year degree, four years if you count the placement year, but these are the modules that they essentially look at, now looks really comprehensive, which is fantastic! When we study finance, finance is not a single field. Finance is a puzzle that sits between all the other functions of an economy. Now, what this allows students to do is it allows them to explore the different aspects of finance and then decide what do they want to do. So as you can see, it's quite a broad spectrum of modules that builds in depth in a very strategic manner.

So the MSc Finance has obviously has the affiliation of CFA. CFA is the most prized professional financial affiliation that a person can have. In fact, when you do an MSc in Finance, having that CFA affiliation and sitting with those exams helps when students are looking for jobs. What this affiliation also allows us to do is that we can offer scholarships to our students. Now a CFA level one exam cost close to $1,000. For our most brilliant students, we offer scholarships, which would give them about 60-70% off that price to just sit those exams and again, it's all about giving students that opportunity to keep growing, to be competitive when they graduate. The MSc in Finance was also ranked 14th in the UK by Financial Times. It was ranked 7th in the UK by Eduniversal  ut I think the most important figure on that slide is that we were ranked 8th in the world for career progression. We continue to support them, even after their graduation. They have access to our career facilities.

Because MSc Finance is a one year course, the number of modules is smaller, but there's also greater depth to these modules. One of the most popular modules that we tend to see is Quantitative Methods for Finance. Now, if I asked you what is the fair price of Amazon, what is the fair price of Tesla? For most people, they would have to take a step back and say, I know the price in the market, but I don't know what the fair price or the intrinsic value of those shares are. For our MSC Finance students, that is it such a simple question. We teach them how to understand the fundamental value of securities using Python, so you don't have to do it in Excel anymore, you've all of this data from  the past 50 years for Amazon or, Tesla and how do you condense all that information to give me one number about the fair price of this company? And we teach our students that, we prepare them for condensing all of this information, using cutting edge software and giving us these answers. Another one that's new, like I said, we are always updating our programmes, is Blockchain and FinTech. So while students continue to use different softwares through their modules and their dabbling with different things, even though they don't have knowledge in computer science. So a lot of students say, well, I don't know how to code at all. That's absolutely fine. We'll teach you. So Blockchain and Fintech is more focused on cryptocurrencies. So the big question that we're being asked now is Bitcoin. Should I be investing in Bitcoin? What is the value of Bitcoin? Is it is the way that it's trading, where does its fundamental value sit? What's going to happen with it? So that's something that we're going to be talking in Blockchain and Fintech. So we don't want our students to be passive learners. So, for example, I'm talking, you're listening. It's not like that in a normal classroom. In a normal classroom, we would challenge our students and say, well, what do you think? How can you make a contribution? What changes can you bring to the table? We teach them to be independent thinkers and this is where our research centres come into play. Our students specifically our MSc students have a chance to work with these research centres, with actual businesses and sit on that table and voice their opinion. Our focus always remains on what impact can Aston students make, not just when they go out into the world but while they're studying their degree. That it is about that innovation.

Let's talk about employability, because really that is what it comes down to when students want to choose degrees. Well Aston was recognised as the Best University Careers Employability Service. Also Aston University has all these graduate fairs, where we have 200 employers coming in to talk to our students, coming in to interview them, coming in with different opportunities that they have for them. We found out that the median earnings of an Aston University graduate sits close to £30,000, five years after they graduate. This is the 15th largest in the UK and with this award that we've just received, you can only imagine that we will move from strength to strength. So where do our students go? So MSc Finance students typically take up roles such as investment analysts, financial assistant, data analysts. So they go to companies like Ford, Jaguar, Land Rover, they go to Bank of England, HSBC, General Electric, Bloomberg, KPMG, PwC. While our students work with small businesses, they're also absolutely good enough to get into big firms across different sectors. So you might ask me, well, but where do they go? My answer is anywhere they want to. We teach them all of those skills, all of that theory to prepare them to sit-in any of these interviews and still be able to do a good job. Scholarship's that's the next big thing. So what scholarships do we offer to our students? There is a link on there and there's a lot of information about it but a lot of these are MSc scholarships for our international students. So you have the Vice Chancellors Scholarship, the Global Ambassadors Scholarship, the Global Excellence Scholarship, and we welcome all of our students to apply because at the end of the day, it's about having those equal opportunities, if they're brilliant, which we're sure they are, we encourage them to apply. Now, a lot of these deadlines are approaching fairly soon. So my recommendation would be to get in an application as soon as they can and again, we have a team that will help them with the scholarships. If they have any questions, they should be able to find all of that information on that link.

Thank you again for your time everyone. Do keep putting the questions through and we'll come back to you. Again, have a great day. Thank you so much. Bye bye. Thanks, Peter. Bye.