Finance and Accounting Degree Programs at the University of Houston Downtown
The University of Houston Downtown appears in our ranking of the Top 10 Cheap Finance Bachelor’s Degrees Online.
Also known as UHD, the University of Houston Downtown offers four degree programs that allow students to major in finance or accounting. One of those is a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) in Accounting. This program provides students with a four-year plan that shows them when they should take each class to prepare for graduate or law school. There are separate plans designed for transfer students coming from Texas community colleges. Students can take electives in areas such as financial reporting, cost management and decision analysis, and auditing and taxation.
The university also offers a BBA in Finance that can prepare students for working as financial managers and analysts. UDH recommends that finance majors select a minor in accounting, marketing or economics, which will require that they take at least 18 credits of classes from one of those subjects. Some of the classes that finance majors can take include Small Business Finance, Real Estate Finance, Portfolio Management, Financial Planning, and Intermediate Corporate Finance.
UHD offers a Master of Business Administration (MBA) that ranks as one of the top MBA programs in Houston. Students must take 20 credits of required classes, including Management of Information Systems, Managerial Accounting and Budgeting, Marketing Management, and Management of the Supply Chain. There is a capstone requirement for all MBA students too.
One of the concentrations available for MBA students is in accounting. It requires that they take 18 credits of classes, including Advanced Taxation, Industry Specific Topics in Accounting, Advanced Auditing and Accounting Research and Writing. The finance concentration only features 16 credits of classes, including Advanced Corporate Finance, Capital Markets and Investment Planning and Ethical and Professional Standards. All MBA students must do a colloquium too.
About the University of Houston Downtown
The University of Houston Downtown is a public university affiliated with the University of Houston. It is one of the four campuses in that system and the only one located in the downtown area. Established in 1974 after the University of Houston took over the South Texas Junior College, it became the University of Houston – College Downtown (UHCD) that same year. As this four-year university grew, it became a full university that kept its affiliation with the system. During its early years, students only paid $4 per credit hour for their classes but had limited programs and courses to choose from. This would change when the university became UHD and removed the word college from its name.
Washington Monthly now ranks UHD as one of the best colleges in the country for students seeking bachelor’s degrees and U.S. News and World Report ranks the university as a Tier 2 school in the south because of its size and other factors. The university offers classes on its downtown campus and on three satellite campuses in Cyfair, Kingwood and the northwest part of the city. There are also a variety of classes and programs available online too. UHD now has an enrollment on all its campuses of more than 14,000 students.
University of Houston Downtown Accreditation Details
Both the undergraduate and graduate programs offered by UHD have accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). This same organization granted accreditation to the university’s MBA programs, including that program’s concentrations in accounting and finance. UHD has primary or institutional accreditation too, which comes from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).
University of Houston Downtown Application Requirements
Though UHD accepts many of the undergrads who apply every year, it asks that those students meet specific requirements, including filling out the application on the Apply Texas website. This site also allows students to apply to other public colleges in Texas. They will pay a $50 application fee and submit their transcripts in a sealed envelope that bears the name of the high school on the outside. Once students submit their standardized test scores, they can go online and see when the university makes a decision on their applications. UHD also accepts transcripts from AP and other high school programs and from other colleges that students attended.
Students applying to the UHD MBA program must use the Apply Texas site too. The university will only consider them for the program if they meet all application requirements, including providing an official GMAT score and supplying official transcripts from any schools they attended where they received credit towards a bachelor’s degree. Students will then submit information to the graduate school via email, including a resume and a personal statement of no more than 250 words. UHD also requires two professional letters of recommendation and asks that those references use the form the university offers online. July 15 is the final deadline for students applying to start in the fall. If the university does not accept them for the fall semester, it may let them begin in the spring.
Tuition and Financial Aid
Tuition at UHD starts at $487 per credit hour for Texas residents and rises to $909 per credit hour for nonresidents. These rates include all the university’s miscellaneous fees too. Students taking up to 19 credits in a semester pay $5,117 to $13,135. They also pay $231 per credit hour for any courses they take beyond this level. The university’s MBA program charges a higher rate of between $712 and $1,084 per credit hour based on whether the graduate students are residents or nonresidents. All students are responsible for covering any of their other costs, including room and board fees.
Students who file the FAFSA can get up to four types of financial aid every year. Most students qualify for government loans, which include PLUS loans for parents and graduate students, subsidized loans for undergrads and unsubsidized loans for grad students. There are also grants and work-study opportunities available. UHD tries to find jobs for students based on their interests and majors and can put finance and accounting majors in the bursar’s office and in similar departments. The Marilyn Davies College of Business offers scholarships for finance and accounting majors too. Most of those scholarships have a final application deadline at the end of May. Students enrolled in the finance and accounting programs who get one of these scholarships can also get other financial aid from the University of Houston Downtown.
