Creating an accounting culture in the classroom

              The Accounting Historians Journal Vol. 17, No. 1 June 1990
David R. Koeppen BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY
CREATING AN ACCOUNTING CULTURE IN THE CLASSROOM
Abstract: Numerous critics of accounting education have suggested that students graduating from accounting programs are well-trained but poorly educated. One reason that this may be occurring is that accounting education has become increasingly rule-oriented, focusing more on training future accountants rather than on educating those individuals. It is suggested here that accounting educators should spend more time developing an awareness in students of the culture of accounting. Two methods for ac-complishing this change are suggested: (1) Focusing on the issues instead of the rules, and (2) providing students with a historical perspective of the events which have developed and shaped the practice of accountancy. By adding culture to the accounting curriculum, students will be better educated and thus be better prepared for their future careers.
Accounting education in recent years has been criticized for not adequately preparing students for their future careers. One common criticism of graduates of accounting programs is the inability of those graduates to think; that they lack the concep-tual and analytical skills needed for success.
For many accounting students, this inability to think may be caused by the absence of a sense of history, or an accounting culture, in the classroom. Due to the absence of this culture, students, as future accountants, frequently fail to understand their roles in society. And, in failing to understand their own roles, they fail to understand how those roles interact with the roles of the standard setting boards, the regulatory agencies, and the various professional affiliations and organizations.
The current educational process is clearly flawed since it denies many students knowledge of the culture of accounting. By making modest changes in the current educational process, however, an accounting culture can be added to the curriculum. This rather modest change brings the study of accounting history into the classroom. And that study can start students thinking.