Internationalization of the Accounting Curriculum
The curriculum at a school of business or accounting today bears remarkable similarity to the curriculum of many decades ago. Unfortunately, this curriculum does not prepare the U.S. businessperson for the environment he or she will be facing in the real world. The accounting curriculum has been driven by domestically minded businesspeople pushing domestically minded faculty to educate domestically minded students. Since these three populations live in a world in which others have up to now readily adapted to the U.S. world ("Everyone speaks English; why should I learn a new language?"), there has been no motivation to change. The challenge accounting educators face to effect change is based on three important factors they must address: 1. The significant change in the global business environment that accounting must serve--that is, the interrelationship of the world's economies. 2. The noninternational focus of U.S. accounting students, who will have to be educated so they can deal with a changing environment. 3. Inertia--the fact that people in general resist change. Business clients, accountants and educators are no exception. Essentially, curriculums are reflections of two forces: the complexity of the business environment and employers' desire for new hires who will be productiver immediately. To keep pace with business complexities, courses on specifics, such as computers, were added to accounting curriculums. This move, however, did not provide students with a sense of the breadth of business issues. Indeed, accountants with broad knowledge of business have evolved in spite of the education system, not because of it. The profession has been urging accounting educators to change their curriculums to meet the needs of public practitioners. However, the issue of internationalizing the accounting curriculum is reawakening the notion that universities should provide a broad-based education, not simply training for a person's first day's work. Furthermore, there is the practice of making curriculum changes department by department--the traditional approach, which has served in the past but needs reexamination for the future. It may be the current production-oriented system of courses (basic, intermediate and advance accounting) is no longer the one that meets job requirements. WHERE ARE WE TODAY? Thus, we are being forced to change, and we are not good at it. This is true both in American business and in American business schools. …