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The accounting academy is facing two critical challenges: an increasing disconnect between academia and practice and a growing shortage of faculty. Recently, the Pathways Commission proposed that accounting programs more fully embrace professionally oriented faculty. This proposal is attractive because it would increase faculty numbers and bring a stronger practice orientation to the academy. Although there may be benefits associated with this proposal, there may also be significant unintended consequences. In this paper, we use two analogs from the NFL to highlight the risks in relying on practice-oriented faculty to solve our problems. We offer a series of reflection questions to promote further conversations on the Pathways Commission’s proposal.

This study is an exploratory examination of cultural differences in accounting educators’ epistemological beliefs of accounting ethics education. It is motivated by a renewed global interest in accounting ethics in recent years following the reported breaches of ethical conducts by individuals from different cultures. In Pratt’s model, conceptions of teaching should be an interdependent and internally consistent trilogy of beliefs, intentions and actions. The purpose of this empirical study is to sketch an outline of how accounting ethics education is broadly understood by accounting educators from three different cultural backgrounds, the Anglo‐influenced Australian, the Chinese and the Moslem‐dominated Malaysian. It explores the cross‐cultural variations in their epistemological beliefs of what to teach, objectives to achieve, the ethics educator, and the learning process. Results suggest that Australian and Malaysian accounting educators differed significantly in their epistemological beliefs on the source of knowledge as well as the acquisition of knowledge. Interestingly, there were no significant statistical differences in the epistemological beliefs held by participants in this study concerning other issues in accounting ethics education, i.e. the delivery of ethics education, transferability, goals of ethics education, separate course, and qualification.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a survey on the perception of the globalisation of accounting education among academics teaching at tertiary schools in Japan. With the acceleration of globalism in accounting education, the aim of this exploratory research is to investigate the perceptions of Japanese academics toward this global convergence.

The sample was collected from accounting educators who were teaching at the undergraduate and postgraduate level of the tertiary institutes in Japan. The subjects chosen for the survey were 300 members of the Japanese Accounting Association (JAA) and were randomly selected from the 2010 JAA Members’ Directory. A total of 87 responses were received producing an effective response rate of 29 per cent.

The analysis of this study found that the majority of Japanese accounting academics’ believed that the International Education Standards had no substantial effect on accounting education. Further it was found that most of the academics did not know how they could confront these obstacles to achieve global convergence, although they were aware of the impediments.

This study failed to portray any possible suggestions or solutions on how to improve future accounting education. Also the sample size was not large enough to generalise the findings. Finally, this study simply used the samples collected from the one single nation of Japan.

The findings will provide a positive direction for standard setters, policy makers and regulatory authorities on how they should proceed in both the design of their promotion strategies and on how to address obstacles that have arisen according to these perceptions.

The primary strength of this study was the fact that it was the first study in the literature to shed light on the perceptions of accounting academics in Japan on the global convergence of accounting education.

This study examines the factors that explain Ghanaian business students’ intentions to pursue a Certified Professional Accounting (CPA) qualification.

The study uses survey method of research and mainly used questionnaires as data collection instrument to elicit information from the respondent group. Using a total of 641 business students from the University of Ghana Business School, a mixture of factor analysis and logistic regression analysis techniques was used in investigating the study objectives.

Results from the regression analysis demonstrate that students’ preference and beliefs about accounting professional qualification, academic major and grade point average are significantly associated with their intentions to pursue a CPA qualification. Moreover, majority of the sampled respondents (47.9 per cent) with the desire to pursue a CPA qualification prefer to be affiliated with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, 27.2 per cent prefer the Institute of Charted Accountant Ghana qualification, while only 7 per cent of the students prefer to be affiliated with the Chartered Institute of Management Accountant.

The findings from this study have important implications for the various professional accountancy bodies, accounting educators and other stakeholders interested in promoting the choice of accounting as a career path among university students.

The results indicate that, as part of the broader strategy to increase the number of professional accountants in Ghana, there is the need to promote the study of accounting at the undergraduate level in the various universities in the country.

This study uniquely uses the behavioral decision theory to explain the dominant factors associated with students’ intentions to pursue a CPA qualification.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the generic skills that are important for the career success of accounting graduates in Sri Lanka from the perspectives of university educators and employers.

Bui and Porter's (2010) expectation-performance gap framework was modified to match with the context of the current study. Data collected via questionnaire survey was analysed for non-parametric tests: the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and the Mann-Whitney test, using SPSS version 20, and quantified the expectation-performance gap and its components.

The major finding of this research is that the main cause for the expectation-performance gap, as identified in the analysis of the constraint gap is university educators’ low confidence in teaching the required generic skills for career success of graduates. However, university educators are aware of the employer expectations of graduate accountants in terms of generic skills. Employers indicated that many of the generic skills are not achieved by the accounting graduates.

Findings of this study reflect the importance of expanding the accounting curricula by embedding and assessing generic skill development activities. In addition, it is vital to develop the capacities of university educators in terms of teaching and assessing generic skills in accounting degree programmes.

This study contributes to the literature as one of few studies that investigate the generic skills development of accounting graduates in Asia, particularly in Sri Lanka.

This paper aims to examine the issues of underrepresentation and barriers that impede Pasifika students’ achievement and success in tertiary accounting education.

The participants of the study were the second- and third-year students from the “Pasifika” ethnic community enrolled in undergraduate accounting degree papers. The first stage of data were collected through face-to-face questionnaire survey and quantitatively analysed. Further data were collected through focus group meetings held as “talona” sessions and analysed using descriptive narrative, to capture the lived experience of the students.

The findings of the study suggest that low self-efficacy beliefs, low self-regulation and culturally unresponsive pedagogical practices negatively impact on Pasifika student success in accounting education. Better student engagement; use of culturally responsive pedagogy; utilisation of internal assessment tools; and more strategic use of group work could help enhance the retention and success of Pasifika students in accounting programmes. The findings also suggest that the institutional support framework for Pasifika students’ needs to be more responsive to proactively help develop their self-efficacy and self-regulation learning needs.

This research makes a significant contribution by informing accounting educators, support staff, tertiary institutions and other stakeholders including Pasifika students, of potential challenges faced by Pasifika students in completing a tertiary accounting qualification. The findings have the potential to assist in the design and implementation of actionable strategies to enhance the retention and success rates for students from this group.

This research complements earlier studies on barriers faced by students from disadvantaged communities in gaining tertiary qualifications and looks specifically at challenges faced by Pasifika students in gaining an accounting qualification.

This study aims to investigate the selection and use of introductory financial accounting (IFA) textbooks in the context of achieving the objectives of accounting education to provide both discipline-specific skills and liberal education.

This paper adopts a qualitative research design to collect data through semi-structured interviews with 33 accounting educators across Indonesia. This study uses the institutional theory approach to explain how accounting textbooks are selected and used to meet the objectives of accounting education at universities.

The study provides evidence of the adoption of a systematic procedure for the selection of recommended IFA textbooks. The selection was driven by the technical-regulatory objective of providing technical training. This objective also guides the use of the recommended textbooks. In a sense, accounting educators were more concerned about responding to institutional pressures of preparing accountants for work in the accounting industry rather than providing students with a liberal education that promotes critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

This study focuses on the selection and use of IFA textbooks. Further research should examine the contents of various accounting textbooks and obtain feedback from the people involved in the publication of the textbooks.

The findings of this study have important implications for accounting educators. They can use these findings to improve their selection and use of accounting textbooks.

This paper compares and contrasts graduate accountant skills and employers' expectations in South East Asia (SEA).

We analyse the employers' expectation performance gap (EPG) in three countries – Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam – to provide a reflection on current professional accounting development in SEA. The study relies on data derived from multiple sources including job advertisements, CIMA “ready for business” project, Glassdoor website and other secondary data sources.

The findings indicate that over recent decades, the changing nature of the economy, state, and interest of the business sector (including the “Big Four”) have led to the wider adoption of professional accountancy qualifications. The findings suggest that graduates should be equipped with active learning activities such as project-based and work-integrated training to fill the expectation gaps between local university educators and employers.

Drawing upon a literature review of professional accounting education, we use the results of the documentations and secondary analysis to describe the performance expectation gap of accounting education in SEA.

The study indicates a large discrepancy between the teachings in accounting education and employer requirements in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia and propose different methods to fill this employability gap in South East Asia.

This study examines the perceptions of accounting faculties toward ethics education, the extent of ethics coverage and reasons why ethics should (or should not) be taught in Japanese tertiary schools. Data for this research was collected from faculties that primarily teach accounting in Japanese tertiary schools in 2009. The results indicate that over 90% of accounting faculties believe that ethics should be taught within the accounting curriculum. In terms of how ethics should be delivered survey participants believed in a more holistic approach, which would encompass the benefits of teaching it as both a stand-alone course and integrating it with other relevant courses. This outcome is in direct contrast to the results obtained from previous studies undertaken outside of Japan. Of particular interest was the fact that the current survey revealed that only 55.2% of respondents actually intend to incorporate ethics into their accounting courses in the foreseeable future. This research successfully adds value to the shortage of literature existing on the perceptions of ethics education among Japanese accounting faculties.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the auditors’ and accounting educators’ perceptions of accounting education gaps and their impact on audit quality in Egypt.

Data were collected using a survey of auditors and accounting educators in Egypt.

The findings indicate a significant negative relationship between deficiencies in specific skills – namely, decision making, information technology, critical thinking, legal knowledge, problem-solving skills, ethical behavior, ambiguity tolerance, presentation skills, written communication, and cost and managerial accounting skills – and audit quality.

The results provide an auditing professionals’ market perspective of the development of students’ skills in the Egyptian higher education system. Specifically, this research provides insights into what skills auditing firms look for and how much these skills differ from those currently developed by public business schools in Egypt.

The results help auditing firms that want to work in the Egyptian market to identify the training needs for entry-level positions. Specifically, accounting graduates from public schools will need training in critical thinking skills, information technology, and writing and communication skills.

This study extends the accounting literature on the relationship between attributes of accounting graduates and audit quality by examining the impact of accounting graduates’ skills development and audit quality in Egypt.