Accounting scholarship is an academic discipline oriented towards the profession of accounting, usually taught at a business school.
Since accounting is a highly technical, standards oriented profession, both practitioners and academics may claim to be experts. The best of these experts have both real life exposure and academic competencies. Accounting directly impacts many other specialties in business and is closely linked with finance.
Accounting academia
Requirements for appointment for an appointment as a professor vary considerably worldwide. Once appointed as a professor, the next step is being awarded tenure. At most institutions, this step is very competitive. Many institutions value academic credentials, professional certifications, and real world experience.
Accounting has generally been oriented towards practical knowledge as opposed to theoretical abstractions. Most students are entering the field for immediate practical knowledge. As such, a professor is expected to have practical experience as an accountant. This is especially true amount among adult/executive students. These student expect practical examples and an MBA case study approach to their education. By contast, PhD students prefer research professors who themselves earned a PhD in accounting.
Areas of research
Accounting scholarship deals with the following areas:
Accounting research can be tailored to a specific industry or knowledge-based, such as accounting for law firms or hotels as well as accounting for quality .
Difference from scholarship in finance
Finance, which is another specialization of business schools, is related to accounting. However, accounting scholarship focuses more strongly on distinctive bodies of knowledge such as financial reporting, financial management, auditing, information management and taxation. Finance, on the other hand, is oriented more towards management of investments and other liquid assets.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, it is almost compulsory for a Professor in Accounting to be a member of one of five registered auditors recognized under the Companies Act . Refer to the article on Chartered accountant for more information about UK government policy for top MBAs in 2004.
United States of America
In the United States, the minimum requirement for appointment as an instructor at an accredited university is a Bachelors degree in accounting and an additional eighteen credits of accounting post-graduate study. A post graduate degree, such as an MBA or Masters of Accountancy, is highly recommended. A Ph.D. in accounting or a related field is required for an appointment at a top tier business school, especially one in which research is undertaken.
Being licensed as a Certified Public Accountant is also strongly recommended.
The outlook for accounting programs in the United States is looking up. While the number of accounting students had dropped from its peak in 1993 and 1994 when there were 60,000 students enrolled in accounting programs, there were 37,000 undergraduate degrees awarded in 2002-2003. This represents a 6% increase from the previous year. There were also 12,655 graduate degrees awarded, a 30% increase. The causes of this increase have been ascribed to the loss of jobs in Information Technology due to the recent dot com crash, as well as the full-employment aspects of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the effects of all of the recent accounting scandals.
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