Greetings to T & C Section Members,
As we start our 2007-2008 academic year, I want to thank each of you for my opportunity to serve as Chair. How old is the Teaching and Curriculum Section?
Possibly since I was an outsider with a forensic accounting bent, I had to learn about the T&C Section, its mechanics, and history. I asked questions.
The T&C Section is only 16 years old, created in 1991. It is quite young. I found a lack of, for a better description, an institutional memory. There were no charges for the various committees. Some committee chairpersons did not know their functions. There were committees with no members. There was an unfinished monograph.
So my over-all goal is to solidify our section and attempt to develop some continuity from one year to the next-an institutional memory. Since I have first hand knowledge of the much older American Taxation Association, I looked for direction at the ATA development. Development of a procedural manual for officers and section representatives will help.
Each year a formal committee structure before the annual meeting with charges is essential. My committee structure was provided to our Monday morning breakfast in Chicago with charges, and all names of officers and committees (with charges) are included in this newsletter. I tried to place each person who asked to be active on a committee. If there is anyone not on a committee who wants to be active, please e-mail me and the appropriate chairperson.
In my opinion, the worth of the T&C Section depends largely upon the work of the committees. We need accountability and documentation of the committee members who truly work. Also, I will ask each committee to determine next August, 2008 if their committee should be continued.
For my specific goals, number one is to increase our membership. We are dangerously close to the magic 1,000 level. If we drop below 1,000, we will have only one member, rather than two, on the AAA Council. The T&C Section should be the largest. We cross all the disciplines.
Just suppose each of you who read this letter would encourage two people to join. As an attachment I have included a copy of a new T&C brochure. Please make copies and place them in your faculty mailboxes.
We can become the largest and most influential section in AAA with each person's help. In June 2007, I e-mailed all of Hasselback's 9,600 accounting faculty members, and I have sent application blanks to many people. Our parent AAA plans to emphasize teaching in the future.
Some of you know my position that student evaluations of teachers-or SETs-have destroyed higher education by causing severe grade inflation and coursework deflation. Professors manage SETs scores by inflating grades and deflating coursework content, just like executives manage earnings. Both are wrong. Executives are put in prison, and we get rewarded and praised.
Higher education is experiencing the simultaneous phenomena of widespread use of student evaluation of teaching (SET), grade inflation, student moral decline (resulting in widespread cheating and plagiarism), and steadily lower student motivation. A panel led by former Senator William E. Brock in the early nineties stated that the U.S. undergraduate education system is a "prescription for decline." This group said that colleges and universities are granting degrees to people who lack knowledge and skills taken for granted in a high school graduate not long ago. Former Education Secretary Richard Riley called the report "a wake-up call" for higher education. A persuasive case can be made that the increased use of SET has caused higher education to become dysfunctional, resulting in a steep, slippery slide in the output quality.
I discovered while on an Erskine Fellowship at the University of Canterbury this summer that universities in New Zealand are now requiring professors to give no more than 25% of uninvigilated work for determining a student's grade.
In my opinion, students are not customers. They are inventory. Inventory should not determine whether we are fired or given a raise. As accountants we should understand this concept. Since students lie more than 50% of time to their mothers, why would they not lie on the SET questionnaires?
Of course, I understand that SETs are sacred cows. I can not eliminate them or outlaw them, but I believe the best teacher is the one who teaches their students the most.
Thus, we need to learn how to measure learning, and develop other ways to measure the performance of professors other than by SET questionnaires. I have, therefore, established a committee tentatively titled "Measuring Accounting Learning" to develop a monograph. You have a "call for papers" from this committee chairperson, Ronald E. Flinn at Creighton University, in this newsletter.
In a similar vein, I believe that the name of our section should be changed to Teaching & Learning" or "Teaching, Learning & Curriculum." Think T&L or TLC section. Since we face few curriculum issues today, I believe that Teaching and Learning best describes our section.
Also, I worry that our section is not preserving our early history, so I have established a "Historical Preservation and Reflections Committee" to develop a short history of our section. Please send any historical documents and information about our early history to Donald Wygal at Rider University.
I have established a Journal of Accounting Teaching & Learning Committee to determine the feasibility of establishing an accounting education journal and to develop the appropriate steps for establishing such a journal. Consideration should be given to a journal that appeals to all sections such as tax, auditing, financial, governmental, etc. with interesting sections contributing to the cost of the journal. I need more members for this committee, so let me know if you are interested.
Finally and most important, Priscilla Burnaby has tabulated the results of a questionnaire sent to our membership last year. I have asked Priscilla to chair the Future Strategies Ad Hoc Committee to recommend both short term and long term things that our section can do over this year and next year. Some of these changes may require by-law changes. Please let Priscilla's committee know your opinions about any of these issues.
This committee is considering:
In conclusion, I pledge to work closely with Dale Flesher, George Krull, and the other officers and committees to make the T&C section the strongest and most active AAA section. We hope to provide benefits for being a member of T&C. Help us!
Thank you,
D. Larry Crumbley
KPMG Endowed Professor
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
Email: dcrumbl@lsu.edu