To most accounting academics, the discipline is obvious, intuitive and nearly immutable. The accounting curriculum that existed when today's faculty were students is largely in place today. The changes that have occurred seem to be largely internal to the curricular structure that emerged long ago. Thus, accounting education has accommodated the proliferation of financial accounting standards, the burgeoning tax code and the occasional new audit technique within a rather stable template.
There have been several exogenous shocks to the system over the last quarter century. The accounting practice world is periodically rocked by large and noisy scandals that call into question the methods that corporate accounting practitioners use. Audit failures cause similar crises of faith. Periodically, practitioners themselves articulate demands for better educational practices in support of their objectives. These have all occurred against the background of the progressive digitization of all information that has certainly changed the delivery possibilities.
At this time, the fundamental question—What is the proper domain of accounting education? needs to be asked. This might embed issues of accounting professionalism, the role of the academy in modern capitalism or the incorporation of the new technological world order. In other words, what should we teach and why? We have a good enough concept of what we do teach—look if you will at the amazing similarity of content across the textbooks in the field, or of courses offered in any school. What makes this sufficient, or even necessary? If we were to take out a blank piece of paper, and were thus freed from our history, what would we teach our students?
The Teaching & Curriculum Section has commissioned me to edit a web monograph with an expected publication date of August 2005. I would like to give accounting educators a chance to take a crack at this. For these purposes, essays are invited. Could you express yourself in ten pages or less? Submissions will be peer reviewed. Deadline: December 31, 2004.
Tim Fogarty
Special Project Editor