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b)
Demands in Business and Government
As the economy grows, the demand for accounting graduates in
business and government continues to grow. However, the
accountant's role in these sectors is rapidly changing.
According to surveys by the Institute of Management
Accountants and the AICPA Visioning Project, professional
accountants are increasingly becoming internal consultants.
They are increasingly visible in positions that combine
finance, systems, and accounting knowledge and skills to
provide information to line managers to aid their decisions.
There are fewer formal training programs for new graduates and
more emphasis on learning on the job. New graduates are
expected to be productive immediately in positions that
require much more than technical accounting knowledge. The GAO
recently observed (GAO, 1998):
"In
the past, the accounting function was paper-driven, human
resource intensive, and clerical in nature. In many
organizations today, recent advances in information
technology, as well as competitive pressures and corporate
restructuring, have combined to dramatically change the
accounting function from a clerical to an analytical and
consultative focus."
Finding
positions in business and government is more complex than
finding jobs in public accounting. The large public accounting
firms have organized recruiting programs because they hire
many accountants every year. Many business and government
organizations do not hire enough accountants to make such a
recruiting program worthwhile. Thus, networking and other less
formal job search techniques often are needed by students to
find a good match between them and a company. In such a
market, internships are playing a much more important role
than ever in matching graduates with companies. At some
universities and in some companies, the number of career
placements that develop out of internships exceeds the number
developed through other recruiting strategies.
Another
trend in business is the downsizing of finance departments,
which is the entry point where most accounting graduates are
hired. As routine accounting functions are increasingly
automated, the need for employees with technical accounting
skills but nothing else to offer has dwindled. Companies are
looking for analysts, someone who can help make sense of
accounting numbers, not just produce the accounting numbers.
The budgets of almost all finance departments of major
companies have decreased as a percentage of sales over the
last decade, partly as a result of outsourcing of routine
accounting functions. This trend continues. Like public
accounting, the accounting positions that are disappearing in
industry are those narrowly focused on technical accounting.
The primary growth area is for accountants who can help
managers better understand and use information for decision
making.
With
the growth of intranets, where managers can have direct access
to databases, the demand for accountants extends into two
additional areas: a) designing and maintaining the accounting
systems and related security and controls; and b) helping
managers find and use information from data warehouses
contained in the intranet. This meansthat graduates with
accounting knowledge and skills that are coupled with either
systems expertise or financial analysis skills will be in high
demand.
Non-Traditional
Deliverers
Non-traditional deliverers, which include corporate and
for-profit universities, are rapidly establishing a presence
in the market for post-secondary education. The fastest
growing sector of post-secondary education is the corporate
university (Traub, 1997). In the late 1980's only a few
corporate universities existed; by 1994, the number had grown
to over 400; today there are over 1000 (Moore, 1997). To house
these new corporate learners on a college campus, thirteen
universities the size of Harvard would have to be built to
handle a single year's growth in enrollment. Corporate
education is currently growing 100 times faster (i.e., 10,000
percent faster) than traditional university education (Davis
and Botkin, 1994). Some of this corporate education is not
competing with university education, e.g., remedial
instruction involving basic skills in reading, writing, and
math job-related skills that are not generic (e.g., McDonald's
kitchen skills), and some CPE courses which are narrowly
focused on particular industry issues. However, much of the
education provided today by corporate universities does in
fact compete directly with university instruction.
Corporate
universities are being established mainly by large
corporations. Davis and Botkin (1994) profile a large number
of such corporate universities, including those of Arthur
Andersen, Motorola, Federal Express, Corning, Microsoft, IBM,
General Motors, General Electric, AT&T, McDonalds, Hart
Schaffner & Marx, and Holiday Inn.
A
second group of new deliverers are the "for-profit"
universities exemplified by the University of Phoenix, which
is now the largest for-profit university in the United States.
In the last decade, when most traditional universities
experienced flat enrollments, Phoenix grew from 3,000 to
40,000 students (Traub, 1997). It is presently growing at the
rate of 20 per cent per year ("The New U," 1998).
Recently,
cable entrepreneur Glenn Jones created College Connection,
which offers students Internet access to inexpensive degree
programs from 13 institutions. College Connections now has
7,000 students and is growing at a rate of 30 per cent per
year ("The New U," 1998). Other for-profits include
Ottawa University, a Kansas institution with campuses in
Arizona, Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong (Traub, 1997); and
the Open University head-quartered in the UK and serving the
UK and Europe (Open University, 1997). Additionally, in 1997,
Michael Milken (junk bond king) and Lawrence Ellison (Oracle
Chairman) formed Knowledge Universe, a for-profit education
company that is aiming to take a $10 billion slice of the
education market from toys to advanced degrees ("The New
U," 1998).
[Executive
Summary] [Appendix]
[Bibliography]
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