Designing a bridge program for internationally educated accountants in an era of resource constraints

ABSTRACT

Internationally educated professionals (IEPs) encounter significant barriers to entry to their professions upon immigrating. Obtaining education in the new country is an effective means of improving their positions. While universities emphasize the need to attract and serve adult learners and a more diverse clientele, the specific needs of immigrants are rarely reflected in institutional policies. I discuss our pilot program for internationally educated accountants (IEAs), its elements, and best practices. Our program was very successful, but may be beyond the reach of many universities due to financial or personnel constraints. I therefore include a cost/benefit framework to analyze each program feature. With this information, institutions may be able to partially implement a program, maximizing the benefit given their resources. Furthermore, some of the program elements could also be useful for international students, domestic students who will work alongside international colleagues, or domestic students who will work internationally themselves.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• bridge programs
• cultural diversity
• internationally educated accountants
• international students

Acknowledgements

The author is especially thankful for the efforts of Darlene Cullimore, Ximena Munoz, Marni Russell, Mark Fouad, Marcia Friesen, and the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All program participants had worked as accountants in their home countries and all had at least a university Bachelor’s level degree.

2. University of Manitoba received $300,000 of funding to run two cohorts of the program. Our costs for the two cohorts were $200,000 in total. This amount did not include the living allowance paid to the first cohort, as that was paid directly to the participants.

3. In our case, because we had dedicated funding for the program and the co-operation of our accounting bodies, we were able to construct two compressed courses in Canadian Commercial Law and Information systems. This was very efficient, as all Bridge students needed these courses and we were able to cover all the required curriculum content in approximately 35% of the course time.

4. Our business school admits approximately 500 students per year, of which approximately 150 select an accounting major. We did not have to put on any additional courses or sections to accommodate the Bridge program students.

5. Every Bridge program participant was assessed as needing the Canadian commercial law content as the law courses that they had taken, if any, were not based on Canadian law. Many of the participants also needed to take management information systems as they may not have taken such a course or the profession determined that the participant’s knowledge was out of date. This was an example gap training: since the material required by the professions was less than a full course, we were able to cover the requirements of the two subject areas in one course.

6. By ensuring that the coaching professor had no knowledge of the upcoming exam, it alleviated concerns that good performance by the Bridge students would be attributed to increased knowledge of the exam content rather than their knowledge of the course. We felt this was important both to protect the Bridge students and to provide good evidence of the educational value of the Bridge program

7. The data generated from this report included demographic data, how students learned about the program, and their opinion about the program. Since these data were only gathered on the first cohort of students, and questions and results were qualitatively similar to the results of our survey presented in Table 2, only the results of our survey are presented in the paper.

8. Participants consented to have these data published pursuant to approval granted by the University of Manitoba Psychology/Sociology Research Ethics Board.

9. One additional response was received, bringing the response rate to 83%. While the candidate’s responses were similar to the rest, they did not consent to having their information used for the study. Thus, their responses are not included.

Additional information

Funding

The author’s position is supported by Centre for Accounting Research and Education of the University of Manitoba, which was funded by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Manitoba, now CPA Manitoba. She would also like to thank the Manitoba Government and the Educator’s Network formed as part of the Manitoba Labour Market Driven Bridge Programs in Manitoba’s Post-Secondary Institutions Project for both financial support and invaluable guidance in setting up our program. No financial interest or benefit has arisen from the direct applications of this research.