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The Challenges for Education
To achieve pre-entry education that will develop the needed capabilities requires a complete re-engineering of the educational process. This includes defining objectives, content, design and methodology. Piecemeal responses to educational reforms will not suffice.Major Components
Efforts to change education for accounting require consideration of five major components of higher education:
Curriculum
Students
Faculty
Universities
Accreditation
Curriculum
Basing pre-entry education on capabilities will mean fundamental changes in the curriculum. The current textbook based, rule-intensive, lecture/problem style should not survive as the primary means of presentation. New methods, both those used in other disciplines and those that are totally new to university education, must be explored. Some of the alternatives for student involvement include seminars, simulations, extended written assignments and case analyses. Creative use of information technology will be essential.
The use of new teaching methods will be a message in itself. Students learn by doing throughout their education much more effectively than they learn from experiencing an isolated course. The skills and knowledge comprising the needed capabilities must be integrated throughout the curriculum. For example, if students are to learn to write well, written assignments must be an important, accepted and natural part of most or all courses. To relegate writing to a single course implies to students that the skill will not be useful throughout their careers and does not require continuing attention. The capabilities must be reinforced throughout the curricular experience.
Teaching methods must also provide opportunities for students to experience the kinds of work patterns that they will encounter in the public accounting profession. As most practice requires working in groups, the curriculum should encourage the use of a team approach.
The development of an efficient curriculum requires attention to integration. Re-engineering the curriculum should include a careful evaluation of topical coverage in all subjects. Emphasis should be placed not only on the presentation of relevant material, but also on the compounding of learning by appropriate combination across course and departmental lines. When knowledge and skills learned early in a university experience are expanded on in work at a later stage, the student's experience is reinforced and enriched.
Faculty
A vital, knowledgeable, creative professoriate is an essential part of the educational process. Most accounting faculty base their course content on information gained through secondary sources-usually textbooks and sometimes standards. They frequently lack other significant, continuing sources of information about the realities of the practice environment. The challenge for the public accounting profession is to assist in developing new ways to maintain a knowledgeable, practice-oriented faculty.
Accounting is a particularly difficult profession in which to maintain a high level of understanding of practice because neither of the two common ways of gaining information about practice is available to accounting faculty. Some professions (for example, most health-related fields) use clinical model, where faculty are simultaneously practitioners and teachers. Often these faculty treat the most difficult cases or circumstances and thus are not only current in the profession but are also at the "cutting edge" of practice development. At this time, very few accounting faculty are actively involved in practice.
In some professions, much of practice is a matter of public record available to faculty for study and analysis. Law professors may go to their library to find many examples of current practice methods and results. The confidentiality provision for accountants prevents faculty from having access to a robust continuing source of information about the evolution of practice.
The nonclinical, confidential nature of accounting creates a faculty that designs and executes pre-entry professional education without direct knowledge of current practice.
Where other professions enjoy much interaction with their teaching faculty, accounting has a persistent "schism" problem. The classroom experience is diminished by the distance between pedagogical content and practice reality. Academics and practitioners would benefit from the stimulation and challenge that come from a meaningful association.
There is no model for increasing interaction between academics and practitioners in a nonclinical, confidential profession. Current efforts to integrate academicians in the practice include seminars, internships and joint conferences. While these efforts are commendable, a much greater level of activity must be achieved. Innovative methods to increase interaction between the practitioners and the professoriate must be created.
Students
Increases in educational requirements may exacerbate the current trend toward declining enrollments. In the free market of academic major selection, students will have to be convinced that the additional investment is worthwhile. Significant increases in tuition or time must be offset by stimulating curriculum and the expectation of increased opportunities upon graduation. Efforts to increase educational requirements must also be consistent with the objective of maximizing opportunities for minorities in the profession.
Universities
To achieve a comprehensive re-engineering of the accounting curriculum will require a major effort from faculty. Currently, most institutional reward structures do not attach a high value to curriculum development activities. To ensure the necessary faculty input, individuals must be rewarded for their contributions.
While the responsibility for designing the specifics of the curriculum appropriately rests with the faculty, the role of university administrators cannot be ignored. Without appropriate leadership and support from deans and central administrations, re-engineering of curricula will be impossible.
Accreditation
Accreditation standards have a significant impact on accounting education. At this time, the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business is the sole accrediting agency for college-level schools of business, management and accounting in the United States. The AACSB has recently initiated a major review of the accreditation process.
Accreditation standards must be responsive to the desired outcomes of educational preparation as outlined in this paper. The accreditation process must also be sensitive to, and supportive of, the innovation and experimentation that are inherent in curricular change.