RESEARCH NOTE Accountants' attitudes to extending accounting degrees to four years: a research note

Abstract

A proposal to extend existing three year accounting degrees at universities in Australia to four years, proposed and supported by the accounting profession of Australia, is controversial. The Australian government will not pay for a fourth year and there is public criticism of the training of accountants. This study investigates the attitudes, feelings and behaviour intentions of 583 practitioner accountants in Perth, Western Australia, and their views about three important aspects of the proposed change. It shows that practitioner accountants belonging to the profession are split about the value of implementing the change.Accounting, Change, University, Education,

Whither (or Wither) Accounting Education in the New Millennium

“…The main accounting education journal within the British oriented academic community is based in the UK (Accounting Education: An International Journal). Although it contains many micro-issue articles there are also those papers which concentrate on comparative education or educational policy including that related to Australia (refer Wilson, 1992;Tippett, 1992;Macve, 1992;Simon, 1992;Zaid and Abraham, 1994;Waldmann and De Lange, 1996;Scheiwe and Radich, 1997;Addison and Waugh, 1998). By including non-UK contributions the journal acts as a means of informing academics in similar yet different systems about the problems, solutions, successes and failures of innovations which they may want to try themselves.…”