Managerial first: reversing the sequence of introductory accounting courses.
Schneider, Gary P. ; Bruton, Carol M. ; Arricale, Jeffrey W. 等
INTRODUCTION
As accounting programs have grown and developed over the past 75
years, they have gradually adopted a very consistent curriculum model
for the introductory courses. In this curriculum model, the financial
accounting topics invariably precede the managerial accounting topics.
In recent years, a number of forces have caused accounting educators to
reconsider many of their assumptions about curriculum and its
implementation.
The Bedford Committee (AAA, 1986) and the Accounting Education
Change Commission (AECC, 1990) have, for example, been the stimuli for
many interesting innovations in accounting education in the past decade.
Solomon and DeBerg (1994) have recently supervised the development of a
new core competencies model for accounting programs in the State of
California. Increasingly, accounting educators are trying new ways to
help their students develop critical thinking skills (Doney, et al.,
1993; Kimmel, 1995), learn how to learn (Bartholome, 1991; Basu and
Cohen, 1994; Geary and Rooney, 1993), learn better in challenging
environments (Baldwin, 1993), and deal with technical information
overload in accounting courses (Anderson and Boynton, 1992).
The increasing prevalence of outcomes assessment (Herring and
Izard, 1992) at many universities is motivating accounting educators to
specify desired skill sets more clearly and identify ways to measure
student mastery of those skills more accurately. The accounting
profession has not been silent about the skills it desires in its new
hires. Even the accounting professionals in industry have funded a major
study that purports to tell educators what they want to see in the
accounting graduates they hire (Siegel and Sorenson, 1994).
These pressures on accounting educators have led to much
experimentation and many new ideas. Somewhat surprisingly, experiments
that alter the traditional sequencing of introductory course content has
been rare.
SEQUENCE MODIFICATION EFFORTS
Ainsworth (1994) and Ainsworth and Plumlee (1993) report the
results of an AECC innovation project at Kansas State University. In
this curriculum revision, the first introductory course covered how one
might use accounting information in making operational decisions. The
second course focused on financing and investing decisions. In the first
course, therefore, the revised Kansas State curriculum integrated many
managerial accounting topics.
Suadagaran (1996) included some managerial topics in a revision of
the first introductory course. That revision yielded a first course in
which he tried to destroy students assumption that bookkeeping and
accounting were synonymous. He accomplished this objective, in part, by
including managerial accounting topics which students found to be more
interesting and analytical than financial accounting topics in the first
course.
Most AECC-sponsored and other curriculum innovations (e.g., Pincus,
1995; Solomon and DeBerg, 1994) have retained the traditional ordering
of financial topics first, managerial topics second. One drawback to
using blended approaches such as those used by Ainsworth and Plumlee
(1993) and Suadagaran (1996) is that book publishers create materials
for the more traditional financial/managerial split. Therefore, an
instructor using a mixed approach would need to cobble materials
together from disparate sources.
Often, faculty that are willing to teach a financial principles
introductory course feel ill-prepared to teach managerial topics. The
opposite is often true for faculty that feel their teaching strength is
in cost and managerial accounting. In many schools, the introductory
courses are staffed by adjunct faculty or doctoral students, which can
make such course customization extremely difficult.
THE LOGIC OF RESEQUENCING
We believe that a logical argument can be made for introducing
student to accounting using predominantly managerial topics. Managers at
all levels of organizations use managerial accounting knowledge more
frequently than financial accounting knowledge. Ainsworth and Plumlee
(1993) argue that an ideal sequence of course topics should begin with
easier material that students can master with fewer skills and progress
to more difficult material.
We believe that students in introductory courses understand
managerial accounting more easily and find it to be more interesting
than financial accounting. Beginning the sequence with financial
accounting ignores this possibility. The present sequencing of
introductory course topics was developed to accommodate the demands of
the professional certification examinations for which accounting majors
must prepare. Many more introductory accounting students are not
accounting majors than are accounting majors.
ADVANTAGES FOR BUSINESS MAJORS
Business schools train their non-accounting majors for careers in
management of corporations, government, and not-for-profit
organizations. Other than those that choose to be finance majors, most
of these students will have careers in which they will use managerial
accounting information and the skills taught in traditional managerial
accounting courses much more than anything they learn in financial
accounting.
All managers are concerned with the pricing of products, the
costing of activities, budgeting, and forecasting profitability.
Managers actually make buy vs. lease decisions and live or die by the
numbers in their responsibility accounting systems. Far more managers
will be involved in a transfer pricing issue than will ever be required
to calculate accelerated depreciation. Therefore, managerial accounting
presents these students with vital knowledge that they can see they will
need as they work on the course assignments.
ADVANTAGES FOR NON-BUSINESS MAJORS
A number of non-business majors take an introductory accounting
course. Many of these students only take one accounting course, so the
need for a careful choice is even more important than for non-accounting
business majors, who generally take two introductory accounting courses.
The non-business majors that might take an accounting course include
students majoring in: engineering, pre-med, pre-law, nursing, education,
and a variety of liberal arts and science subjects.
All of these students have some interest in gaining a basic
understanding of how businesses operate. When these students take a
course in financial accounting, they find the same mind-numbing and
confusing double-entry bookkeeping details that bore the business majors
to tears. Engineering students are far more interested in cost
estimation and budgeting issues than they are in learning about debits
and credits. Students heading for health care or education careers will
find their lives ruled by activity measurements, cost allocations, and
budgets to a far greater extent than by the correct amortization of
discount on a bond.
ADVANTAGES FOR ACCOUNTING MAJORS
Increasingly, accountants are being asked to become business
advisors in addition to fulfilling their traditional number-crunching
roles (Borthick, 1992; Elliot, 1994; McKinnon and Bruns, 1992). Public
accounting firms expect their audit staff members to be vigilant in
looking for ways to help clients improve their operations and
identifying ways in which the firm may provide audit clients with
additional consulting services. Auditors with a firm grasp of managerial
accounting principles will be better able to excel at this valued
function.
An increasing number of accounting graduates do not enter public
accounting and many of those that do enter public accounting ultimately
take jobs in managerial accounting areas. Arguably, a solid base of
managerial accounting is at least as good for most accountants as a base
of financial accounting and it may be markedly better for most. Most
accounting programs even the 150-hour programs require students to take
twice as much financial accounting as managerial accounting. Giving
these students a good start in managerial accounting principles might be
a good way to help equalize some of that imbalance.
ADVANTAGES FOR THE ACCOUNTING PROGRAM
Cohen and Hanno (1993) found that one important factor that
students use to decide whether to become accounting majors is how well
they performed in their introductory courses. The first accounting
course is often the first business course of any kind that sophomores
take. When this course includes financial accounting topics, topics that
lend themselves to dry, mechanistic methods of dissemination, we may be
losing bright, creative, potential accounting majors. Adams, et al.,
(1994); Cohen and Hanno (1993); and Saudagaran (1996) all report
findings that brighter students were turned off by the highly-structured
mechanical bookkeeping details of introductory financial accounting
courses.
CONCLUSIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
In this paper, we have presented arguments for reversing the
sequence of the introductory financial and managerial accounting courses
that are typically taught in U.S. and Canadian accounting programs. We
briefly reviewed two reports of topic order revision in introductory
courses, however, these program revisions each integrated topics from
managerial and financial accounting into both courses. We explained the
logic of our arguments and discussed the potential advantages of
reversing the order of the topics in the two introductory courses for
non-accounting business majors, for non-business majors, and for
accounting majors. We noted an advantage to accounting programs an
improved ability to recruit the best and brightest students from the
introductory courses into the accounting major.
In concluding, we note that the potential advantages we outlined
for students would also inure to the benefit of other stakeholders that
have an interest in accounting curricula. For example, employers of
these students would reap the benefits of having new employees that see
the value of accounting as a true business tool. We also believe that a
complete reversal of course order may be more effective than selectively
exchanging topics between courses because of the textbooks, established
pedagogies, and instructional materials available from publishers that
support an integrated presentation each financial and managerial
component of introductory accounting.
Yet another alternative to the traditional sequencing of financial
accounting first would be to have students take both courses in the same
term. Such an alternative would provide significant benefits to both
accounting majors and the accounting faculty. Accounting majors could
move on to upper-division courses in half the time presently required
this can be a serious issue for students transferring from community
college programs or for those switching majors during their sophomore
year. The accounting faculty would benefit from the balanced workload.
Since many faculty consider themselves to be either financial or
managerial specialists and prefer to teach only in their specialty, this
alternative would permit stable year-round staffing loads in each area.
Adjunct faculty and doctoral students would also benefit from having one
preparation throughout the academic year. Non-accounting majors that are
only required to take one course might be permitted to select either the
financial or the managerial course to tailor the curriculum to their
specific needs. This idea is certainly worthy of further study.
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Gary P. Schneider, University of San Diego
Carol M. Bruton, University of San Diego
Jeffrey W. Arricale, KPMG Peat Marwick, LLP