Finance

What is Finance?

At its fundamental level, Finance involves the interrelationships among time, value, risk, and how decisions are made concerning resource allocation. Finance focuses on these decisions both at the firm (corporate finance) and individual (investments) levels while combining and extending theory and tools from Accounting, Economics, and Math into the practice of financial decision making.

What can I do with Finance?

Workers in financial occupations are highly coveted in the workplace. They exhibit low unemployment rates and are among the most highly compensated. Careers include financial services professions as well as financial operations in industry and government among others. Regardless of career, financial acumen equips graduates to look after their own financial well-being. Subsequent study in Finance may include one of numerous valuable graduate (e.g., MBA, MSF) or terminal (PhD or DBA) degrees. One may also choose to pursue the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst), a professional designation recognized worldwide, and highly sought by firms from Wall St. to Main St.

Why Finance at PLU?

The PLU Finance program offers a powerful combination of pragmatism and cross-disciplinary training built on a strong foundation of Accounting, Economics, and Math. The pragmatism stems partly from the deep professional experience of the faculty that has influenced the choice of teaching methods to include the application of Finance to real-world business and investment decisions. The PLU Finance student should emerge with the ability to apply financial tools to decisions from all of the business disciplines taught at the PLU School of Business.

Finance Concentration Requirements

Finance – 20 semester hours

  • BUSA 335 Investments & Portfolio Management (4)
  • BUSA 337 International Finance & Risk Management (4)
  • BUSA 437 Financial Analysis & Strategy (4)
  • BUSA 438 Empirical Finance (4)

And 4 semester credits from the following:

  • BUSA 432 Financial Derivatives and Trends (4)
  • ECON 344 Econometrics (4)

Note that ECON 102 is a prerequisite for most upper division ECON.

  • Internship highly recommended but does not apply to the concentration.
  • Recommend Math 151 as substitute for Math 128.

Recommend minors in Economics, Data Science and /or Mathematics.

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