Progress in Accounting Education and Research

Accounting education has come a long way in recent years toward shedding its vocational and bookkeeping images. The forces of change have affected all of the essential factors in education: subject matter, faculty, students, the learning environment, and the quality of research.

The accounting body of knowledge has been touched by a much broadened perspective of its mission, i.e., to that accounting is an information system geared to the utility of its users. In particular, mathematics, the behavioral sciences, and the computer have served to change accounting education radically. The computer places the burden of data processing on machines, allowing the accountant to shift his concern to systems planning and control. Mathematical and operations research models have been shown to be applicable to a wide variety of accounting problems and yield superior results to the routines which accountants have used traditionally for these purposes. Statistical sampling is now commonplace in auditing while statistical experimentation has burgeoned across the field of accounting research. The behavioral sciences lay focus on the human person as "the only real causal agent in society," for as Diesing observes, "numbers, laws, logics, are causal only as they enter into human acts."

The doctoral degree has become a prerequisite to holding a faculty appointment in accounting in most four-year colleges and graduate schools of business administration. A 1968 study shows that 31.4% of all full-time accounting faculty held the doctorate and 59.7% held the CPA certificate at that time. The former ratio will undoubtedly increase as non-doctorate faculties retire. As research training is stressed in most doctoral programs, it is understandable that the quality of research and the emphasis on a more rigorous and interdisciplinary approach to accounting education will rise proportionately. The periodical literature in accounting is extensive.



Accountants also contribute extensively to the literature in a variety of other fields. An abstract service on the literature in accounting is provided by Commerce Clearing House.

Ray Ball has indexed most of the empirical research in accounting through 1970, and several other major efforts have been made to evaluate the overall quality of accounting research. While there is much room for improvement it must be concluded that accountants have made excellent progress in closing the research gap in recent years, thus bringing the accounting discipline closer to academic acceptance and respectability than at any other time in the history.

An excellent barometer of change in accounting education is its textbook literature. Publishers are understandably reluctant to move faster than the market will support. We are entering what can be called the third generation of accounting texts. The first can be described as traditional texts for traditional courses, the second as new approaches to traditional courses, and the third as texts which substantially alter old courses and/or create new ones.

Traditional texts are descriptive and provide a heavy dosage of rules and procedures which stem from the conventional wisdom. The rationale for doing things is provided rarely, and often there is undue emphasis on laborious detail.

Second generation texts sample developments in other fields and the current state of art in accounting practice. They incorporate this new knowledge into the framework of existing courses. An analogy is pouring new wine into old bottles.

Third generation texts attempt to bring new content and structure to the ac-counting curriculum. One major effort of this type was a three-year study to ex-amine and restructure the elementary accounting course. The study was sponsored by the Price Water house Foundation. All three generations of texts exist concurrently in accounting education at the present time.

While textbooks still occupy central stage in accounting education, a recent survey indicates a growing use of modern media such as computers, learning machines and television. A nationwide clearing house for computer programs in accounting teaching and research was established at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1973. These and other curricula developments are reported in an annual series of innovative accounting and information systems course outlines edited by Professor Thomas J. Bums of Ohio State under the title of Accounting Trends. There is a growing emphasis on doctoral education in accounting, leading to either the Ph.D. or D.B.A. degree.

Professor Paul Garner has studied the doctoral population in accounting and arrived at the following findings; based on a sample group of 272 doctoral candidates:

1. Only 11 of the 272 doctoral students (4%) are female.
   
   
2. Of the 272, 231 (85%) are married. In the majority of cases the wife is employed while the husband pursues his doctoral studies.
   
   
3. Age upon entering the doctoral program is: {a) 25 years or less (40%); {b) 26 to 30 years (37%); and (c) over 30 years (24%).
   
   
4. Age of completing the doctoral program is: (a) 25 years or less (5%); (b) between 26 and 30 years (50%); (c) between 31 and 40 (38%); and (d) 41 years or more (7%).
   
   
5. The 272 students in the sample undertook their undergraduate work in 156 different institutions, and the maximum number of doctoral students from a common undergraduate university or college was 5.
   
   
6. Of the 272, 26 (10%) are foreign nationals.
   
   
7. The dissertation or area of principal research is: (a) information systems (17%); (b) financial reporting and investment analysis (14%); (c) accounting principles and standards (13%); {d) financial and general accounting (19%); (e) auditing (10%); (f) professionalism and ethics (8%); (g) accounting history (6%); (h) taxation (6%); (i) the legal environment in accounting (5%); (/') education, governmental or cost accounting (4%); {k) international (3%); and (/) others (4%).

While doctoral programs traditionally have been geared to the production of future teachers, there is an increasing utilization of Ph.D.'s as researchers and staff specialists in public accounting, industry, and government.



As in most academic endeavors, some schools attain a higher degree of prestige and recognition than do others. In accounting as in other fields, most attempts at ratings rely heavily on the grapevine.

Professional Examinations

The most prestigious designation in accounting is the CPA certificate. The practice of accounting, in common with other professions, is regulated by law. The first CPA legislation in the United States was enacted by the state of New York in 1896. It defined certified public accountant in legal terms and required an examination process incident to certification. The law provided that the examination cover the theory of accounts, practical accounting, auditing, and commercial law. The first examination was administered on December 15-16, 1896. After a long period in which each state administered its own examination the Uniform CPA Examination process evolved slowly to the point where in 1952 all states and jurisdictions of the United States were included in a common program administered by the Board of Examiners of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

The CMA (Certificate in Management Accounting) is a new professional designation. It was established by the National Association of Accountants in 1971 to:

1. foster higher educational standards in the field of management accounting;
   
   
2. to establish management accounting as a recognized profession by identifying the role of the management accountant and the underlying body of knowledge, and by outlining a course of study by which such knowledge can be acquired; and
   
   
3. assist employers and educators by establishing an objective measure of an individual's knowledge and competence in the profession of management accounting.

The CPA Examination

The CPA examinations are administered twice a year in May and November throughout all states and jurisdictions of the United States. A guide to the examination under the title Information for CPA Candidates is issued on a current basis by the AICPA. It makes this observation concerning the general content of the examination: "The content of the examination changes as conditions change in the discipline of accounting. It is possible, however, to indicate the general content of the examination, and the knowledge and skills which it is typically designed to test."

Candidates may expect the examination to measure the extent of their knowledge of:

1. Accounting concepts, postulates, and principles
   
   
2. Generally accepted auditing standards, audit programs, and auditors' reports
   
   
3. Business organization and operation, including knowledge of the basic laws governing such organization and operation
   
   
4. Use of accounting data for managerial purposes
   
   
5. Quantitative methods and techniques as they apply to accounting and auditing
   
   
6. Federal income taxation
   
   
7. Current professional literature and accounting issues receiving special attention at the time of the examination.

Candidates are expected to demonstrate their ability to apply to specific situations their knowledge of the foregoing areas with good judgment and logical reasoning, and to draw reasonable conclusions from such applications. In addition, the examination will determine the extent of their ability to:

1. Write precisely and concisely, and in good English
   
   
2. Organize accounting data and present them in acceptable form
   
   
3. Discriminate among data in a complex situation, and evaluate and classify such data
   
   
4. Apply appropriate accounting concepts and auditing procedures to given situations
   
   
5. Use mathematics with reasonable facility.

The grading of the examination is handled in New York under the supervision of 35 specialists. There is a four-stage grading process which ultimately establishes a score for each part of the examination. A passing grade is 75 or better, and if a candidate passes two parts he is entitled to sit for one or both of the remaining parts without repeating the sections that were completed before. Accounting practice parts I and II are considered as one section of the examination for this purpose.

Howard Sanders has studied the relationships between academic preparation and completion of the CPA examination. The results of his study indicates that 87% of all candidates have completed 24 semester hours or more in accounting courses; however, the number of credit units in accounting appears to bear no major relationship to performance on the examination. In 1970, 54% of the candidates took a formal CPA coaching program in addition to their academic preparation. Correspondence courses rate low in effectiveness while in-house coaching courses sponsored by CPA firms achieved the greatest rate of success. In summary it appears that formal coaching courses-other than correspondence programs-do aid in passing the CPA examination.

In another study, Park E. Leathers has shown that students who do well on scholastic competence tests such as ACT (American College Testing) and SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) have enhanced prospects for passing the CPA examination.

A number of accounting departments administer such tests as part of their student counseling programs. Timely guidance may provide alternative career tracks for students who demonstrate low aptitude for accounting.