It would be foolish to prescribe that all accountants should have
a degree in accounting without considering the content of accounting degrees
and their relationship to professional training. There is much to be said for
ensuring that the profession benefits from the broad range of experience and
views that results from welcoming trainees from many other disciplinary areas.
Employing firms have been known to complain that trainees with accounting
degrees can present problems: these young people begin their employment knowing
a bit about the area and this may lead to over-confidence. Someone with a
degree in French or geography may be more malleable initially.
A more fundamental question is: what is the purpose of an
accounting degree? - a particularly pertinent question in these days of increasing
university fees, Higher Apprenticeships and attempts to widen access routes to
the profession. In theory, there is little point in a strongly technically
based accounting degree programme. In
general, university lecturers, if they have a professional qualification at
all, will, with the best will in the world, be somewhat out of touch with
practice. Subsequent professional training is far more important in providing understanding
of up-to-date approaches to the "how" of accounting.
What an accounting degree can provide is an introduction to the
"why" of accounting. All accountants should have a good grasp of the
role of their profession in society, they should take pride in the history of
the profession, the huge contribution of accounting to economic growth. An
understanding of this heritage is essential for the future development of the
profession. And, at a time when the profession faces considerable
criticism, the accountants of the future should appreciate the immense power
that the accountancy can exercise for good. There is little scope within
professional training to develop critical thinking about these big issues.
Accounting programmes could provide the space and support for this
complementary study, not necessarily in the form of a traditional 3 year
undergraduate degree.
However, I know from experience that making even a small shift
towards emphasising the “why” of accounting is really difficult. Students
choosing accounting degrees often seem to believe that numeracy is the most
important requirement. This impression can be confirmed by a curriculum which
emphasises technique and in assessment does not weight interpretation of
numbers more heavily than calculations. They are likely to be more comfortable
with calculation and may be resistant to
studying the history and sociology of accounting. Lecturers who have not
studied these areas themselves may feel that they are having to work outside
their own comfort zone.
Accreditation of accounting degrees by professional bodies is
viewed as a useful marketing tool: the assumption is that students wishing to
train as accountants seek degree programmes which will exempt them from some
professional examinations. This aligns the curriculum to those examinations and
reduces the space for studying the “why” of accounting.
There can be very few currently practising accountants who
remember a time before accounting standards existed. (In a laudable initiative, ICAEW have harnessed the historical skills of Professor Steve Zeff and produced
a record of that distant time:
Accounting standards were established to address the problem of
trust in the profession. That problem has not gone away but standards have proliferated
to the extent that financial reporting has become increasingly complex. How can tomorrow’s accountants visualise a new solution if their
training has not included some study of the history of the problem and some
tools with which to critique the status quo? This is what broadly based accounting degrees
can - and should – offer.
