<p>I've just completed my first semester in a Bachelor of Business and Commerce course - I've only done the compulsory units so far, but I'm very sure about choosing Accounting as my first major. The most common second major to match Accounting with seems to be Banking & Finance, which is the main reason why I'm considering this major. Other majors that I find attractive are Economics and International Business. </p>
<p>I'm planning to further specialize in Accounting by doing ACCA or CPA.</p>
<p>I'd like to know which second major would work well with Accounting - in terms of gaining a wider scope of knowledge in the business field that would ensure job opportunities and climbing up the corporate ladder. Other majors available are Business Law, Management and Marketing.</p>
<p>I'd appreciate some good and constructive advice! Thanks. Cheers.</p>
<p>Accounting is a steady, reliable career. It’s frequently the safe bet. Finance tends to be quite the opposite. It’s the risky career, the one where you can fail miserably, but in which there’s a chance of making obscene amounts of money. Doing both could compensate for the shortfalls of the other, while still providing the benefits and flexibility of the other. And from what I understand, the reality of finance is that it’s essentially just a small specialty within economics - even if the colleges break them up and all that. Finance majors take almost all of the same courses as economists and even the finance courses tend to overlap heavily.</p>
<p>Management, on the other hand, could put you on the career track to get you promoted outside of the accounting department to accounting manager (obviously) to controller to CFO, etc. People and management skills tend to be under-supplied by current pool of accountants.</p>
<p>Business law and marketing I can only speculate, really. I’ve not heard of much overlap with accounting and marketing. In fact, accountants seem to have somewhat of a distaste for the subject. Business law would certainly make sense - people who specialize in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and tax law and the like are lucrative specialties within accounting. However, I honestly don’t know anything about how useful the degree is.</p>
<p>Personally, I’d go with Finance. Not only is it a classic double-down strategy that allows you to leverage what you already have in one major with where you want to go with the second, but it is also a nice diversify-and-insure strategy as the shortcomings of one make up for the shortcomings of the other.</p>