Master of Professional Accounting

The time and cost can be reduced based on your previous qualifications and professional experience. This means you can fast track the masters degree from 2 years down to 1.5 years, or even 1 year duration. See entry requirements below for more information.

Study at a university ranked in the top 1% in the world for accounting* and expand your depth of knowledge and career opportunities. Deakin's Master of Professional Accounting allows you to graduate with the skills to practise as an accountant, specialising in your chosen field of business.

Whether you are looking to upgrade your existing qualifications or move into a new professional field altogether, the Master of Professional Accounting opens up new career possibilities. 

Catering to students from both accounting and non-accounting backgrounds, you will have the opportunity to complete the necessary studies to become an associate member of CPA Australia, to enter the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand to undertake the CA program, or to enter the IPA professional program.

Now is the perfect time to draw on your prior career experience and add layers of new knowledge to become a sought-after expert in your field. 

Some of the key areas you will study include: 

• auditing 
• financial accounting 
• management accounting 
• accounting systems and analytics 
• economics 
• finance 
• law. 

Our course content is influenced by our advisory board, made up of members of peak professional bodies and active accounting professionals. This means everything you study is updated and maintained through extensive industry research. 

This includes the research developed by our IPA-Deakin SME research centre, which is dedicated to driving key insights for small-to-medium enterprises and by our Deakin Integrated Reporting Centre, which provides strategic and operational leadership in integrated reporting policy and technical knowledge, as well as academic and executive education and cutting-edge research.

Learn from academics who leverage their specific expertise and up-to-date research to embed progressive learning throughout your course journey, giving you the ability to work on contemporary case studies with a real-world application.

As a graduate, you will have the option to complement your primary studies in professional accounting with a specialisation in a wide range of business-related fields. Designed to meet industry demand for skilled professionals with a breadth of transferrable skills, a specialisation can help deepen your knowledge in a particular business field and benefit your future career.

Course Structure:

The Master of Professional Accounting is typically 8, 12 or 16 credit points. The exact number of credit points you study depends on how much credit you receive as recognition of prior learning (RPL) –your professional experience and previous qualifications –which can save you time and money.

To complete the Master of Professional Accounting, students must attain a total of 16 credit points, consisting of 12 credit points of core units and 4 credit points of open electives (which may include an optional Faculty wide specialisation) plus completion of the compulsory 0-credit point module, DAI001 Academic Integrity Module. Most units (think of units as 'subjects') are equal to 1 credit point.