Educators, practitioners and others have criticized the universities for not providing adequate communication training to their accounting students. Gingras (1987) conducted a survey of CPAs concerning the importance and overage of written communication skills in business schools. This study compares the perceptions of educators and CPAs regarding the importance of written communication skills to a CPA, the coverage of written communication skills in the accounting curriculum and the relative importance of a list of writing activities performed by a CPA. The focus groups include university professors, and staff assistants, senior, managers and partners of public accounting firms. The responses analyzed using the ANOVA technique, indicate that coverage of communication skills is relatively low and most accounting students take only one writing course in their college curriculum. Educators and practitioners recommend general writing related courses as the appropriate instruction in the accounting curriculum. Many respondents believe that to be successful in the profession, accounting students should increase their writing skills by studying grammar, punctuation and spelling and by taking more courses than are currently required in most business curricula. In addition, significant differences between educators and CPAs responses are analyzed and discussed.
The changes that are taking place in accounting education are placing greater time constraints on many accounting educators. As a way to help manage an accounting educator's three main responsibilities, teaching, research and service, this article suggests a synergistic approach to the three main responsibilities to seek greater efficiency and effectiveness. As businesses constantly look for ways to improve, we in academia must do the same. Handled properly, integrating teaching, research and service can be beneficial to all parties involved. This article describes the authors' attempts to (1) integrate teaching and research efforts, (2) research and service, and (3) service and research with teaching to create a synergy among all three main responsibilities. The ethical considerations that are important as one seeks to reap the synergies that are possible are then discussed. Finally, research is encouraged to better understand the impact of synergistic efforts on all parties involved.Accounting, Education, Research, Teaching, Service, Synergy,
Major changes in the financial profession warrant assessment of current practices and strategic planning for the future education of such professionals. This article discusses the core competencies, obtained from numerous studies, of accounting and finance professionals. After common core competencies are identified for the both accounting and finance professions, the need for change in accounting and finance curricula are discussed. Next, a combined undergraduate curriculum for both the accounting and finance students, which incorporates the common core competencies, is proposed. Finally, the authors issue a call for further research.
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The need for significant changes in accounting education has been discussed for more than a decade, but this challenge has been unmet by educators and the profession.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The purpose of this article is to discuss (1) the need for change in education (2) a model for accounting education, and (3) examples of how to improve accounting education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accounting programs that adopt significant changes that provide students with the necessary skills will thrive in the future and continue to supply the profession with a sufficient supply of qualified graduates. </span></span></p>
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.