Bridging the gap between accounting education

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN ACCOUNTING EDUCATION AND

PROFISIONAL PRACTICES

Bridging the gap between accounting education and professional practices

To begin with we would like to provide some information about the essence of

accounting as professional area. It is important to answer the main question of this research –

how to bridge the gap between accounting education and professional practices.

Doing business is not an easy task. It is associated with the process of making daily

decisions, which are able to influence efficiency of this business. They are made by the

different people – from a company’s managers to its clients. Obviously, in order to make

these decisions effectively we need appropriate information basis. This basis can be provided

by accounting and financial analysis.

“The purpose of accounting is to provide the information that is needed for

sound economic decision making. The main purpose of financial accounting is to

prepare financial reports that provide information about a firm's performance to

external parties such as investors, creditors, and tax authorities” (Financial

Accounting).

In short, the main goal of accounting is to provide informational basis for making

reasonable decisions by the different stakeholders of a company. We can divide these

stakeholders into two groups – internal and external ones. External stakeholders are a

company’s clients, shareholders, partners, investors, creditors and regulative bodies. Internal

stakeholders are a company’s managers and employees.

These groups of stakeholders have different purposes of making decisions. External

stakeholders usually tend to get some benefits from investing in a company or from

purchasing its goods and services. On the other hand, internal stakeholders need information

to make decisions, related to a company’s production and financial operations, performance,

in general.



According to this division we are able to point two types of accounting – financial and

managerial accounting. Financial accounting is for external users, while managerial

accounting is for internal users to make needed decisions. This is the main difference

between these two kinds of accounting. Respectively, these two types may be prepared by the

different professionals. Financial accounting must be conducted by the professional

accountants, while managerial accounting can be prepared by simple employees, since it does

not require some particular knowledge.

Respectively, managerial accounting is not regulated by some strict principles or

standards. It is usually done in form that is the most appropriate for the managers of a

company. Financial accounting is regulated by the accounting standards, about which we are

going to talk below. It caused by the fact that the main goal of financial accounting is to

check a company’s reliability and transparency. It should be done to protect the interests of

the mentioned groups of external stakeholders and society, in general.

Despite a type of accounting, accounting is usually based on the accounting standards

and principles. That is why we would like to say a few words about the accounting standards

and organizations that develop them.

Accounting standards are principles of accounting that are used to provide objectivity,

transparency and efficiency of accounting procedures. These principles should be universal

and standardized. A formal definition of the accounting standards is the following.

“Accounting standards are rules according to which accounts have to be drawn up. They

demand minimum levels of disclosure, lay down fundamental principles, define the meanings

of terms and specify how numbers should be calculated” (Accounting Standards).

Among the most famous accounting standards we may point out the following ones:



1. The assumption of continuity implies that the enterprise will operate for the

foreseeable future;

2. Principle of least cost implies that profits are revealed in the accounting only

after actual receipt, and loss - immediately after the occurrence;

3. Principle of objectivity requires that the accounting data should be obtained

from the duly executed original documents. Also, this principle can be treated as requirement

to the accounting suggestions to be based only on objective information;

4. The principle of double entry system requires that each transaction is reflected

on accounts twice (on the debit one account and credit - other);

5. The principle of balance requires equality between assets and liabilities of the

company.

Profession of accountant is probably one of the most interesting and difficult in

business. In general, the main role of an accountant is to prepare reliable business information

for a company’s stakeholders – from a company’s managers to clients, shareholders and

regulative bodies. Any decision of these stakeholders is based on this information. That is

why the role of accounting just cannot be overestimated.

That is why an accountant bears a great responsibility. Ethical issues are one of the

most important aspects in a profession of accountant. Alas, recent history has been

characterized with a range of accounting standards, when the ethical issues have been broken.

In these scandals accountants have committed financial frauds in order to get some benefits.

Usually, they commit such frauds in order to hide information from regulative bodies and

creditors; in order to show better financial picture of a company etc.

Therefore we can say that a good accountant should meet the optimal combination of

ethics and professionalism. It is a really difficult task. This task should be executed by both



educational and professional institutions. In fact, there are a lot of special courses and

programs that provide appropriate preparation for accountants. For example, there are

national and international institutions that issue special certificates, which are a great plus for

professional accountants. Therefore we can conclude that there is not a great problem with

educational opportunities for accountants. They combine traditional and commercial

educational programs. However, there is another problem. We mean that there is some gap

between accounting education and professional practices. Moreover, there is a great gap

between academic accounting researches and professional practices. This opinion can be

proved by the following words.

“In recent times a number of commentators have indicated that accounting

research has become insufficiently innovative and increasingly detached from

practice and society. Hence a gap appears to have emerged between the concerns

of policy makers, practitioners and academics as to the need to identify the impact

of accounting research and to establish links between research output, practice and

social impact” (Evans).

Therefore, the majority of professional experts supposes that there is a significant gap

between the so-called academic accounting and professional accounting. This gap exists

between education and professional practices, accounting researches and practical

recommendations. We are interested, first of all, in the gap between education and

professional practices. Such gap may have a lot of significant consequences:

First of all, graduates are not able to find an appropriate job, since their skills do not

meet professional requirements. As a result, the degree of unemployment is growing;



Second of all, companies that propose accounting services are not able to hire

professional employees. They are forced to spend additional financial resources on further

professional education and development of their employees;

Finally, the whole business society suffers from this situation, since it cannot get the

optimal accounting services.

In our opinion, the reasons for such gap are the following:

Courses at universities are maintained by academic researchers that usually do not have

appropriate professional experience. As a result, they can only teach some basic academic

backgrounds, but not really useful practical issues;

The accounting world is really fast changing. The accounting standards and principles

are changing every day. It is simply impossible to follow these changes. Respectively,

educational programs do not respond to professional standards very often;

Traditional educational programs for accountants do not propose professional practices

for students. It is an expensive approach. Only special courses propose such opportunities.

However, these courses are expensive and not every student is able to handle it.

The main question of this paper is how to bridge the mentioned gap. We believe that

the following steps should be made:

More financial resources should be accumulated for educational programs for

accountants. Governmental and nongovernmental organizations, professional associations

and accounting firms must become donors for such initiative;

Professional accounting firms should propose opportunities for students to get

professional experience during studies at university. They will be able to combine education

with practice. It is going to increase their quality on a labor market;



Finally, we must say that not only respective accounting institutions should bear

responsibility for bridging the gap under consideration. Students and future professional

accountants also should understand this problem and do everything possible to eliminate it.

They have to combine studies with practice in accounting companies, look for opportunities

to get professional experience during studies at university.

We believe that the mentioned steps are going to solve the problem under

consideration. However, it is going to take a lot of time and financial resources.



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