Barriers to Accounting: Australian Indigenous Students' Experience

Abstract

Australian Indigenous people are under-represented in accounting studies and in the accounting profession. As part of an investigation of the cause of this situation such that it can be overcome, this project addresses the relevant study choices of high-school students in Darwin. Through semi-structured interviews with students and teachers, it is found that diverse cultural issues have significant impact on Indigenous students' study options and study success, that there are important differences between urban Indigenous students and remote Indigenous students, and that addressing merely attendance, literacy and numeracy issues is unlikely to make an impact on students' study choices as they relate to accounting.

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge with sincere gratitude the support and cooperation of a Darwin College in the planning and conduct of this research. Without their assistance this project could not have been undertaken. The authors also acknowledge the helpful comments of Professor Nola Buhr and two anonymous reviewers on earlier drafts of this paper. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the BAA Accounting Education SIG Annual Conference, Dublin, 26–28 May 2010, and authors would like to thank those attending the conference for their valuable comments.

Notes

This was noted particularly during conversations with the Auditor General of the Northern Territory, Indigenous business people and Indigenous MBA students.

Data to support this were sought but are not released by universities.

The business study course includes only six accounting topics.

This is particularly important in tropical Darwin.