The curriculum design in universities from the perspective of providers in accounting education

Education, Summer, 2007 by Kai-Wen Cheng

2. Courses that should be supplemented can be categorized into four types: Language skills (business english and english conversation); communication skills and abilities; managing skills (strategic cost management, information management, enterprise resource planning, financial information system, and business software application); as well as knowledge of law (tax law). The results pointed out both the trend of internationalization and computerization of enterprises and the fact that the tax system is becoming more and more complicated. This result was also consistent with the opinion of earlier research (Ma, Ma, & Ko, 1999; Richard, 1993; Williams, 1993; Albrecht & Sack, 2000).

3. Courses that should be deleted are: Public finance, microeconomics, macroeconomics, international trade and foreign exchange, and data processing. It can be inferred from this result that the courses of public finance and economics focus on theory and thus are not very useful in practical business dealings. As for the course in data processing, the inference is that as students today are generally already equipped with the fundamental skills of word processing, they do not obtain what they really want from this course. Consequently, they think the course should be deleted.

4. The participants think that students should be divided into employment and advanced study, so they may make proper preparations for their career choice ahead of time. This result was in accordance with the view of Cheng (2002).

5. The participants regard case study approach to be essential. This result was generally consistent with the opinion of earlier research (Lavitt, 1992; McEwen, 1994; Pithers & Soden, 2000; Ma, 1996; Fan, 2000). Moreover, this present study concludes that most participants think that juniors and seniors can better adjust to case teaching. As basic financial courses are generally taught during the first two years of college, they regard the appropriate time for implementing case teaching to be the last two years of study when they have completed these basic courses.

6. The participants consider the prerequisite credits system in accounting departments to be too strict and believe a little more flexibility should be added to the four-year school system. That flexibility will allow students to decide how soon they want to graduate based on the individual ability and ideas. In addition, students can take more courses they are interested in and thus facilitate their career planning. The survey result is consistent with the views of earlier research (Tu, 1989; Albrecht & Sack, 2000).

It has been undergone many changes over the years since "accounting" this term started. Today, under the influence of globalization and the expansion of technology, many scholars think that there is an obvious discrepancy of expectations between the providers of accounting education (i.e. teachers and students) and the demanders of accounting (i.e. employers of accounting firms and enterprises). Although more and more research has investigated this discrepancy of expectation, there is no consensus regarding what kind of curriculum planning is the best. In this continuously innovative century, school education will play a much more important role than ever before (Lai & Lin, 2004). To survive in the current fast-changing business environment, each school must cultivate well-prepared students who can meet the requirements of intensive global competition. Therefore, curriculum planning has to become an indispensable and important issue for school administrators to note. The findings of this study suggest some clear and practical directions that can to be incorporated into current curricula planning for university accounting education.