Prerequistie Criteria for Master's Program

Below are each of the prerequisites and “basic” terminology we should see in a course description to say yes. Please remember that if a student is coming from a recognized public or private school with a BS in Business, Finance, Accounting, or Economics, likely they will be fine in all five areas and we don’t need an extremely scrutinous review.

Not every single item listed below should necessarily be found. But if say 70% of what is below cannot be verified via a description, than a syllabus should be requested every time. If a review of a syllabus does not show a majority of the items below, than send the syllabus to me for final approval. I put a * next to the items that really must be there to show the student has completed the proper course regardless of what the description or syllabus says. Of course I can attend a future staff meeting to discuss more once persons have had a chance to review this.

Accounting (often financial accounting or accounting 1)

The accounting cycle * Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) Financial statement preparation and analysis * Journal entry * Assets, Liabilities, Inventory, Depreciation (some of these items should be seen)

Micro Economics (Often times Introduction to economics is not sufficient) Costs of production of the firm Regulation/deregulation of the business Labor markets Opportunity costs Supply/demand * Market competition Market risk

Macro Economics Market systems Wide issues of supply and demand at the national level (not company level) Foreign trade and impact on our economy with the import and export of goods Unemployment Government policy and the impact on the economy

Finance Cash budgeting Capital structure Net Present Value, time value of money, internal rate of return * Cost of Capital * Ratio analysis Debt financing Bond and Stock valuation

STATISTICS Regression and multiple regression analysis * Hypothesis testing * Central tendency and dispersion Central limit theorem Probability Mean, mode, median Excel * (There must be clear demonstration the student knows how to perform basic functions in excel to include creating formulas, spreadsheet manipulation, etc. This will be the toughest part to judge).

MARKETING Consumer behavior Marketing mix 4 P’s (price, promotion, placement, product)* Marketing Plan part of the course * Market segmentation Marketing strategy

American Government American and local forms of government Structure of American government systems Various branches of government at the local or national level Government influence on business and other interests

In short, we want students to have an understanding of how government influences our lives as citizens and creates policy for our governance. Since these students will be in those positions some day, we want to ensure they know the purpose of American government. Foreign government knowledge will not help in this case.

Human Resource Management These topics should be in a basic human resources/personnel administration course:

Employee selection and placement Labor relations Compensation management Labor law to include OSHA Employee policies Employee training Recruitment Performance evaluation