T. S. Eliott and Academic Accounting
Timothy J. Fogarty
Case Western Reserve University
Now that’s a title that makes you want to keep reading! For those of you that think that I find inspiration in Cats, you will be disappointed. On the other side, I am also not going to suggest that we are hallow men amidst a wasteland. Instead, consider if you will a line that I am confident you all have heard:“That’s how the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.”
More and more of what I see in academic brings out the truth of that line.
The application of this idea can be put simply (as a convenience to those unwilling to read this piece to its end) as the likelihood that the resolution of the great questions of the day facing higher education in accounting are unlikely to be made in any official, or even observable, way. What is more probable is a slow incremental process that produces a de facto result catching almost everyone unawares. If one need physical analogies (and who doesn’t?) contrast a automobile tire that blows out when the car is moving at 60 mph to a quiet day wherein you just happen to notice that your tire is inexplicably flat. Whereas most of us would prefer the latter in the case of automotive safety, we would opt for clear and decisive outcomes in other venues.
The biggest question of the day for our industry is job security. Perhaps not for us, but for the academy as a whole, the question of whether or not tenure will continue as a viable structure is front and square in many conversations (whether they start that way or not). For many years, I harbored the belief that this would necessitate a Big Decision. Although I never really thought through the institutional details of such, I figured that there would be clarity produced by some sort of Thumbs up or Thumbs down conclusion about whether tenure was sufficiently valuable to continue or too expensive to sustain. At such an event, a serious and sustained consideration of all of the evidence on the tenure issue could be examined by those best able to process it, and come to the right decision. It has become clear however that such a confab will never occur. Tenure will decline, and perhaps disappear, by dribs and drabs. Those of us currently with it should begin thinking of ourselves as a dying class.
Tenure is a serious problem, but arguably more anxiety producing for Ph.D.’s in political science than for us. Worse come to worse, you and I could provide some accounting services on the side (word to the wise-don’t let your practice certifications lapse!). Let’s focus a little more directly on academic accounting. Evidence mounts that we are withering away as a discipline. Count the faculty at just about any school in the early 1990s and now, then conjure the story line that fits the data. The abdications of duty by doctoral programs? De-professionalization? A return to the days of the part-time faculty? Surely somebody will do something, won’t they? Don’t bet on business school deans, who were major architects of the problem. Don’t expect the AICPA to rush in with anything except with the MBA/CPAs ready to replace you. Our practitioner friends still want to know why we do research. Didn’t the large public accounting firms just pony up a few million to help? Thank you, but it’s a drop in the bucket. Historically, the AACSB probably did stem the tide by creating the demand for separate accounting accreditation, which will be politically difficult to abandon. However, the AQ status regulation probably hurt as many schools as it helped. The AACSB has proven an unreliable partner to accounting education, since they are more interested in fetishizing accreditation than furthering a discipline. Without strong allies, academic accounting seems destined to twist slowly in this wind, at a time when other business disciplines seem to be doing fine. With strong student enrollments, the gradual decline of academic accounting is quite ironic. Why face up to a problem when it will ultimately solve itself?
As we go gently into that good night, I search for evidence that I am wrong. I just don’t see the mechanism for the rebound. Nor do I see the political courage for the Big Decision that will reverse the tide. Returning to TS Eliot, consider the following from The Love Song of J. Alfred Proofrock:
Time for you and time for me
and time yet for a hundred indecisions
and for a hundred visions and revisions
before the taking of a toast and tea
I am not sure if that cheers me up or not. But that should be no surprise, since my failure to interpret poetry led me to accounting.
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