I would be interested in participating in a discussion in how best to provide business students (likely accounting majors) sufficient timely information to properly consider a tax career. It appears the recruiting process (e.g. for internships), primarily by CPA firms, comes early in a student's academic process usually junior status, often before any tax courses are taken. Therefore, most students being recruited, have only educational exposure to accounting through their course work and defer to a selection of assurance. As an academic (former practitioner) teaching taxation in a business school, my concern is that some changes need to be made in order to provide accounting majors a balanced exposure to all aspects of a career in accounting, including taxation.  This change process should be a collaborative effort by academia and potential employers (e.g. CPA firms, industry, government). 

Below are comments made by participants at the MSCPAs conference October 29, 2010:

-Need effective presentations and resources for teaching accounting, i.e., topical videos for advanced tax topics

-Need better pedagogy i.e., a practice set to create a not-for-profit so in class can review disparate answers.

-Need more authentic assignments i.e., Management accounting business memo.  Students need to be able to filter for relevant info, formulate key questions, present alternative solutions, and support recommendations.

-Need to change the perceptions of high school guidance counselors, i.e., Career preference tests are based on 1950s DOL profiles which are no longer relevant about what accountants do!

-Need to recognize what accounting is being outsourced to the third world and what our value proposition is.

-What should be done about high school students that are not top notch that want to do accounting?

-Current accounting students are not prepared to do accounting in practice—need more internship experience!

-Accounting grads should be work ready!

-Look at accounting:business curriculum….should it be 50:50?

-Students need step by step experience in how to conduct an audit so can learn to think beyond checking off the step on the audit checklist.

-What can be done about the international regulatory barriers?

-What can be done about the barriers to obtaining international experience?

-What responsibilities does the accounting profession have for regulation?  Are we thought leaders in new regulations and laws?

-K-12 GenEd should include business and accounting, why doesn’t it?  What can be done?

-PhD shortage-are there enough faculty to teach?  Are enrollments rising?  Is ADS working?  What else can be done?

-Current faculty should promote the academy as a profession choice.

-Current Accreditation [credentialing] of faculty is NOT what the profession needs

-Curriculum should allow for different professional pathways: public, private, academic….one size or emphasis does not fit all!

-Can we afford to provide different pathways? 

-How to teach emerging topics, i.e., reconciling book to tax income becoming more difficult due to fair value accounting.

-There should be one accounting license for US—broad credential.  Granted at national level not state level.

There should be other credentials for SEC versus non SEC work skills…

Given your interest and position in strengthening accounting education, I thought I would share one thought with you. That is, that understanding accounting entries can lead to a greater understanding of accounting.

In Strategic Finance magazine recently there was an article that I found very interesting: See: http://www.imanet.org/PDFs/Public/SF/2010_08/8lawson.pdf

Lehman’s Shell Game: Poor Risk Management  By Saurav K. Dutta, CMA; Dennis Caplan, CMA, CPA; and Raef Lawson, CMA,  CPA, CFA
Lehman’s precipitous fall that began in 2008 ended in bankruptcy.  The 2006 strategic shift from a low-risk brokerage model to a high-risk, capital-intensive banking model burdened the company with dangerous illiquid assets, and then the subprime crisis exploded. What followed was a sophisticated implementation of Repo 105 and 108 transactions to cloak the true condition of the company’s worth. The authors analyze the legality and ethics of the accounting practices during the fall.

I e-mailed the authors to compliment them on their article and their judicious use of 4 sets of journal entries that made some of the author's points come to life for me. They all e-mailed me back and said "thanks" plus they were especially glad that I liked the use of journal entries. They had debated whether to include them or not -- knowing that professional articles nowadays generally do not include journal entries.  Ultimately they decided to include them anyway because they thought they would prove useful. And, to me they did.

I know that accounting education today neglects journal entries -- for the most part. And, maybe that line of thought should be reconsidered.

Ta ta 4  now!

John

 
 

John M.  Wachowicz, Jr., Ph.D.,

CPA
Professor and Regions Bank Scholar

The University of Tennessee

Department of Finance – 438 SMC
916 Volunteer Blvd.

Knoxville, TN 37996-0540

Having reviewed the overheads, it seems like this is an exciting idea and has a lot of potential!  I can't wait to learn more about it!

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