Academic standards and challenges for accounting educators

A recent paper on Transforming Australia’s Higher Education System identifies a number of significant reforms for the sector including the establishment of a Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). The paper also foreshadows the development of competency based standards for universities for all degree awards in Australia. TEQSA will then be responsible for checking compliance with such standards in a similar fashion to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation panel. An article in The Australian Financial Review reported that accounting will be the first discipline to set minimum standards as required by the new Australian Qualifications Framework regime as “Standards set for accounting” Accounting was chosen because we have a very strong level of engagement with both the profession and industry in relaion to the discipline.” (Lebihan 2010, p34) While minimum academic standards for an accounting degree will address appropriate technical skills there is no doubt that given widespread publicity about concerns with communication skills and accounting graduates (Birrell, 2006a, 2006b) the standards will also include non-technical skills. Indeed on February 8, 2010 the federal government announced that it was cancelling the Migration Occupations in Demand List due in part to the inability of migrants to gain employment in the occupation for which they were trained due to poor English skills. Accounting has been on the list since September 2004 and is part of the reason for the explosion in numbers of international students choosing to study accounting in Australia. [Introduction]