Is accounting students’ writing ability related to their academic performance?

Abstract

Many accounting departments in the United States list good writing ability as a learning goal for accreditation purposes. However, the question of how writing ability relates to accounting academic performance remains largely unexplored. The authors analyzed transcript data to shed light on the relationship between accounting students’ writing ability and their academic performance in their undergraduate accounting courses. They found that writing ability does affect accounting academic performance, even after controlling for prior grade point average, gender, and nontransfer versus transfer status. Our finding adds to the understanding of the specific relationship between writing ability and academic performance, and to the general body of research on writing ability in accounting education.

Keywords:

• Academic performance
• accounting students
• writing ability

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the participants at the 2013 Western Region American Accounting Association Meeting and the 2014 American Accounting Association Annual Meeting for their helpful comments.

Notes

1 Transfer students are typically students from community colleges and nontransfer students are from high schools.

2 This university was listed as one of the 50 Best Public Colleges in 2017 (http://time.com/money/best-colleges/rankings/best-public-colleges/).