A Career-Neutral Accounting Curriculum?

IN 1986 the Bedford Report proclaimed "the minimum objective of accounting education programs should be to prepare students to begin and develop in a wide range of professional accounting careers." Three years later, the managing partners of the then Big 8 accounting firms wrote in their "Perspectives" paper that "passing the CPA exam should not be the goal of accounting education." Both reports reflected the concerns of academics and practitioners about the bias toward public accounting at most universities. Unfortunately, given the structure of most accounting curricula, it appears the bias still exists.

In response to the profession's prompting, the accounting faculty at Kansas State University (KSU) created a curriculum designed around how students learn and that emphasizes professional skills. The new curriculum has eliminated public accounting bias yet still meets the needs of KSU students and their potential employers. After all, as the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA®) points out, the vast majority of accounting majors will ultimately end up in private or governmental accounting, so courses biased toward public accounting don't adequately prepare students for many career alternatives.