She’s trying to decide on one vs the other.
Right now she’s got a BBA and a relatively low-level white collar (pink?) job in a financial institution.
Thoughts?
Finance, where the big bucks are.
Most, but not all, accounting jobs are looking at the past and are pretty (not completely) rules bound. Tends to be less pressure on your decisions, as long as you can justify your decisions via GAAP (or tax code, or the audit standards book, or whatever standard you are driving to).
Most, but not all, finance jobs are more speculative. More pressure and more room to make mistakes - or make a LOT of money.
What sort of work does she like?
She was very happy in a previous management position that was very operational, and very non-executive in nature.
I’m guessing accounting has it, based on that.
I have my BBA in Finance, and if I had to get a master’s in either, it would be Accounting. Finance =/= Accounting, and there are many more jobs that, while a finance major could perfectly handle it, the employer wants an accountant, so just having a Master’s in Accounting would double the possibilities.
From my experience, it looks like employers think that accountants can do finance things, but finance people can’t handle accounting. YMMV.
Ding ding ding - we have a winner! I agree with this. I am in finance (currently M&A) and I could still be here doing this work if I were an accountant, plus, I would have a lot of other opportunities available to me if my background were accounting. If she’s going to do the Master’s in Acctng, I would also recommend considering the CPA. You need the education and credentials of accounting to do accounting, but you can get the experience and do fine in finance.
Edit: plus a lot of finance is also being able to sell. If she can sell, she would do fine as an investment banker. In M&A, my job is to sell my company to entrepreneurs and convince them that their best exit strategy is to sell to us.