Crisis in US Accounting Education: Twenty Years Later

Introduction

The Accounting profession is a constantly changing organism that molds itself to the meet the needs of the clients it serves. Over the last century the Accounting profession has changed dramatically from providing basic bookkeeping, tax filing services to sophisticated, complex client consultation services. The accounting profession went from focusing on transactions style business to knowledge service business. These changes are a result of meeting the needs of the clients and to remain as efficiently and effective as possible to satisfy the clients’ needs.

Accounting education in universities and colleges have helped to provide accounting education and foundational knowledge to prepare the students for entering the profession. In the early days this education was basic bookkeeping but as the profession has changed and modified itself to meet the needs of its clients, so too has higher education for accounting.

Over the last two decades academics and the profession have questioned whether academia is keeping up with the needs of the profession. In the early 2000s, both academic and practitioner articles had begun mentioning that accounting education is outdated. The point of this chapter is that accounting education needed to change its focus and approach to teaching accounting to ensure future accountants’ skills are relevant for the twenty-first century. Today, in 2021 these concerns are still relevant (some would say even more pronounced), and academics and practitioners still question the relevancy of accounting education. As the profession continues to change so must the approach to accounting education. Accounting educators lay the foundation to the knowledge base of future accountants, thus, to have a continuing strong accounting profession, accounting education must adapt as well.

The purpose of this chapter is to address the gap between accounting educational curriculum at universities and colleges in the United States and the expectations of the profession. This chapter discusses how has higher education have failed to address the changes in meeting the needs of the profession and what gaps exist to meet the future professional needs. In addition, this chapter discusses the technical and technological skillsets are needed now in accounting education based on the tools currently being used in the profession.