Revolutionising the Accounting Curriculum in Higher Education: A vision of the future

Abstract

Experiences of teaching since Covid first led to campuses closing worldwide in March 2020 highlighted problems in how accounting is taught and assessed. Those problems threaten the integrity of the education process and the quality of future accounting graduates. This paper considers the pressures these factors place on accounting faculty and proposes measures to adopt to address them. It also addresses the recognised problem that accounting programmes do not produce graduates appropriately equipped for a career as accountants, especially now that technology is causing the nature of entry-level positions, and so also those above them, to change. In response, it proposes how accounting programmes may be redesigned to produce graduates equipped to both meet the demands of employers and develop careers that respond to the rapidly changing role of accountants. In doing so, it proposes major changes to how accounting is taught in universities, to its assessment, its curriculum, to faculty recruitment and training and, where relevant, to accreditation of accounting programmes by professional accountancy bodies.