Do we teach enough it skills in management accounting courses? A survey of accounting educators that explores the current use of Information technology content in management accounting Education shows that accounting students are not being taught the it skills They will need in the business world

Management Accounting Quarterly, Fall, 2006 by Akhilesh Chandra, John J. Cheh, Il-Woon Kim

The dominance of ERP at the graduate level provides evidence of its maturity. The ERP wave dominated the Y2K issue during the 1990s, when most companies seized the opportunity to reengineer and streamline their information systems. With most implementations now already complete, the next phase in ERP concerns the challenging issues of measuring return on ERP investments, integrating various ERP systems, and applying management accounting concepts.

In summary, analysis of the data shows that undergraduate courses cover more IT topics than graduate courses. This may be explained in part by the relative emphasis of hands-on experience at the undergraduate level. At the graduate level, the common thread is to build expertise on critical thinking using real-life business problems through case studies, research analyses, and the ability to leverage resources for competitive advantage. Thus, there is less emphasis at the graduate level on the multidimensional role of IT for business. These findings reflect the traditional focus of management accounting education, where the progress toward incorporating IT-based skills is slow.

SUPPORT AND RESOURCES

We also asked respondents about their perceptions of the amount of IT support and actual resources provided by their accounting department and/or college. Table 4 shows the responses to four dimensions pertaining to IT support for management accounting instructors. The overall mean is 4.29, which is lower than the mean of IT coverage in classrooms, as shown in Tables 2 and 3. This suggests that instructors have been integrating more IT into their classes than is supported by the available IT infrastructure.

Note in Table 4 that the overall mean for undergraduate programs (4.20) is lower than the mean for graduate programs (4.38). This implies that instructors teaching undergraduate courses believe that they require more IT support/resources than graduate school instructors. This aligns with the indication that IT is integrated more within undergraduate courses than graduate courses.

Though one would expect that the heightened awareness and increased emphasis on technology in business schools, coupled with declining IT costs, would translate to higher IT support for faculty, the mean scores in Table 4 are only marginal and reflect the need for improvement in this area. Interestingly, respondents ranked computing facilities for students as being the least supported item for both undergraduate and graduate programs. This appears to be a major constraint in an effort to strategically integrate IT into management accounting curricula.

Based on these findings, it appears that both the breadth and depth of IT support for management accounting instructors need expansion. Respondents perceive only marginal IT support in all four dimensions. Work needs to be done to improve computing facilities for students and to make them more accessible.

SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT SUPPORTING IT EDUCATION

Table 5 presents the rank and mean on several dimensions of the school environment's ability to support the incorporation of IT into management accounting curricula at both graduate and undergraduate programs. In undergraduate programs, students on average take more credit hours towards management accounting (10.06 hours) than students in graduate programs (7.95 hours). Higher than average required credit hours for management accounting may be explained by differences in semester and quarter systems across the sample schools. We also measured the environmental support in terms of the school's mission and the accounting program's mission. The overall mission-based support is weak to moderate. Support for IT-based management accounting curricula driven by the missions of both the school and accounting program is lower for graduate programs (3.93 for accounting program mission and 3.95 for school mission) than for undergraduate programs (4.16 for accounting program mission and 4.20 for school mission).