Accounting education, research and practice: After Enron, where do we go?

Abstract

Recent accounting scandals have brought into question the efficacy of accounting education and research and the relationship of accounting educators to the profession. This paper calls for a comprehensive reassessment of accounting education, especially in terms of: undergraduate accounting programs; the development of an approach to accounting research and scholarship that is more closely focused on impact rather than purely methodological rigor; and the establishment of significantly more interaction between the profession and accounting educators. These changes, some of which could be painful and disruptive to the current structure of accounting departments, must begin to occur or we as accounting educators run the risk of being marginalized as the accounting profession tries to respond to the needs of society.

Keywords:

• Accounting education
• liberal arts
• life-long learning
• curricula reform
• research relevance
• societal impact
• USA
• international experience

Notes

¹The 150-hour requirement is a strange hybrid as it does not require a degree beyond the baccalaureate. Rather, it just requires a set number of additional hours. For example, in the USA many undergraduate programs in accounting require 128 credit hours to complete a Bachelor's degree in accounting so the 150-hour requirement necessitates an additional 22 hours of education in this case. Further, since professional licensing in the USA is the prerogative of individual states, actual course and other requirements for these additional hours vary widely.

²For more discussion on this issue in an international context, see Mathews (2001) and associated commentaries in Vol. 25, No. 4 (2001) of Accounting Forum (pp. 395–404).

³For additional information concerning the Bologna Process see: http://www.coe.int/T/E/Cultural_Co-operation/education/Higher_education/Activities/Bologna_Process/default.asp or http://www.coe.int/T/E/Cultural_Co-operation/education/Higher_education/Activities/Bologna_Process/LisbonSeminarIntro.asp#TopOfPage. According to the Council of Europe website, ‘An important goal of the Process is thus to move higher education in Europe towards a more transparent and mutually recognized system which would place the diversified national systems into a common frame based on three outcome levels – Bachelor, Master and Doctoral – and recognized different paths according to which they were achieved.’

⁴The direction of change will also always likely be influenced by the need to consider the views of the leading international accounting firms. While active in promoting change, they also have particular views as to what they deem to be appropriate educational commitments and priorities (see PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2003 for one of the most recent position statements and a related critique by Baker, 2004).

⁵In 1955 there were 7,478 members from practice and 2,926 academic members in the AAA. By 2003 there were only 734 members from practice and 6,026 members from academia.