This short course surveys all the major topics covered in a full semester MBA level finance course, but with a more intuitive approach on a very high conceptual level. The goal here is give you a roadmap and framework for how financial professional make decisions.
Offered By
Finance for Non-Finance Professionals
Rice UniversityAbout this Course
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Shareable Certificate
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Beginner Level
Approx. 14 hours to complete
English
Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, Turkish, English, Spanish
Skills you will gain
Financial AccountingCapital BudgetingCorporate FinanceFinance
Flexible deadlines
Reset deadlines in accordance to your schedule.
Shareable Certificate
Earn a Certificate upon completion
100% online
Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.
Beginner Level
Approx. 14 hours to complete
English
Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, Turkish, English, Spanish
Offered by
Rice University
Rice University is consistently ranked among the top 20 universities in the U.S. and the top 100 in the world. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
3 hours to complete
Course Overview and Basic Principles of Financial Valuation Discounting
Welcome to Finance for Non-Finance Professionals! In this section you will find general information about the course and instructions on how to navigate the course. For the first week of lectures, we will be covering the basics of financial valuation. We will start with the basics of compounding and discounting rates of return over time. Using these tools we will then move on to valuation using the discounted cash flow method. Along the way, we will demonstrate our valuation tools with a variety of practical examples and compare our analysis with other valuation techniques.
3 hours to complete
15 videos (Total 101 min), 3 readings, 2 quizzes
2 hours to complete
How to Spend Money (Capital Budgeting tools)
Welcome to the second week of Finance for Non-Finance Professionals! In this week of the course, we will build on the basic valuation tools from week one to start making capital budgeting decisions. Our capital budgeting review covers the basic tools like Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, Payback period, and return on capital. Our discussion of the relative advantages of each different tool leads us into sensitivity analysis and the advantages of spreadsheet modeling.
2 hours to complete
11 videos (Total 72 min), 1 reading, 2 quizzes
2 hours to complete
Measuring Cash Creation and Flow
Welcome back to Finance for Non-Finance Professionals! In our third week together, we will go on a treasure hunt through the financial statements. Using discounted cash flows as our motivation, we search through the income statement and balance sheet for all the uses and sources of cash. Our search leads us to our primary measure of value creation: Free Cash Flow. Free cash flow will form the basis of most financial analysis and this module gives us a roadmap for estimating and forecasting cash creation within any organization.
2 hours to complete
10 videos (Total 60 min), 1 reading, 2 quizzes
3 hours to complete
How Much Does Money Cost? Evaluating the Cost of Capital
Welcome back everyone! In our final week together in this course, we switch gears and take an external view of the firm from a Wall Street, or capital markets, perspective. We think about the basic tradeoff between risk and return, how to measure risk, and how to put a risk premium on different kinds of investments. We then take our analysis of risk and return and use it to estimate a firm's cost of capital. Finally, we circle back to free cash flows, capital budgeting and valuation to tie together all four weeks and get ready for our capstone case analysis.
3 hours to complete
10 videos (Total 72 min), 2 readings, 2 quizzes
Reviews
TOP REVIEWS FROM FINANCE FOR NON-FINANCE PROFESSIONALS
by RMAug 16, 2020
This is a very well designed course. Taking you through basics and in the end puts you in a real business scenario where you are expected to take a decision based on the tools and concepts you learnt.
by KHMar 27, 2020
Great Course, Very solid start for those who are trying to enter Finance world. It makes you love this field if you are not familiar with it and have no previous experience.\n\nGreat Job Professor.
by UUJul 20, 2020
I learned a lot of things during this course. The conversation with a practitioner really gives you insights about the real world applications, and where our knowledge is applicable in the market.
by JSOct 1, 2019
Very good overview of finance. For everyone looking, this is not specific to personal finance, but rather a general view and introduction to the most general topics. And a great one at that!
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