Data analytics in Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business–accredited U.S. university accounting programs: A quantitative research study

Abstract

The impact of data analytics on the accounting profession has been discussed for more than 15 years, accompanied by increasingly fervent calls from employers for an escalating level of data analytic skills in accounting program graduates. The authors provide an in-depth examination of the incorporation of data analytic skills included in the accounting programs at 271 randomly selected Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business–accredited universities within the United States. In doing so, the authors provide an empirical measure of the degree to which universities are incorporating data analytics within their curriculum, examine differences in analytics education based on university enrollment, and identify best practices within the population.

Keywords:

• Accounting curriculum
• accounting education
• data analytics
• data analytics education

Notes

1 Unless noted otherwise, we use the phrases data analytics and data analysis to encompass other, related, terms including accounting, business, and mathematical analytics or analysis.

2 For all eight of technology-related topics the AICPA surveyed, respondents largely commented that they included the topics in their accounting information systems course. This would seem to make the accounting information systems course quite compacted.

3 A total of 314 schools were evaluated. A total of 43 schools were rejected from the sample for not having an accounting major, having unsecured websites, or not having sufficient public data available.

4 These cutoffs equate to the 20th, 48th, and 73rd percentiles of the sample.

5 Courses required as part of a university’s general education courses or the business school core curriculum are included in this data as accounting majors are required to take those courses.

6 Such resources, free for academics, include, but are not limited to visualization software (https://www.tableau.com/community/academic), data workflow management software, https://www.alteryx.com/why-alteryx/alteryx-for-good), robotic process automation software, and https://www.uipath.com/rpa/academic-alliance), Ernst and Young Academic Resource Center (https://www.ey.com/en_us/who-we-are/ey-foundation-and-university-relations/academic-resource-center), Deloitte Trueblood and Forensic Accounting Cases (https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/trueblood-case-studies-deloitte-foundation.html, and https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/forensic-accounting-case-studies.html), and PricewaterhouseCooper’s data analytics cases and course materials (https://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/university-relations/data-and-analytics-case-studies.html).