Golden Gate University plans to offer a forensic accounting certificate completely online in the fall semester.
The move to bring forensic accounting courses completely online will broaden access worldwide and allow students who typically lead busy lives and demanding work schedules flexibility for completing the program on their own time. Students local to the San Francisco Bay Area will still have the option to attend classes in-person as well as online.
The course is primarily structured towards forensic accountants, accounting professionals, and litigation attorneys looking to expand their forensic accounting expertise.
The recent string of high-profile corporate blunders and white-collar crimes has certainly brought mainstream cache to forensic accounting, but the practice is more diverse in its practical application as well, said Mary Canning, dean of the schools of accounting and taxation at GGU in a statement. Assessing economic damages from the BP oil spill is a more recent example, but the practice touches on everything from marital and family law to financial claims, fraud, royalty audits and more.
The Forensics Accounting Certificate program at GGU debuted in Jan 2009 as part of the School of Accountings curriculum and in response to a 2008 decision by the American Institute of CPAs that authorized the specialty credential: the certified financial forensic.
GGUs advisory board comprises top national subject-matter practitioners from boutique and leading national forensic accounting firms that designed the forensic accounting curriculum, which includes courses in fraud, forensic accounting in family law, economic damages, forensic valuation, bankruptcy and insolvency, construction claims, lost wages and employment litigation, disputes in mergers & acquisitions, intellectual property, financial statement investigations, complex discovery and data management, expert testimony, role of the expert, allegation of audit failure, post acquisition disputes, valuation and lost profits.
To find out more about the forensic accounting program at Golden Gate University, visit
