The Pathways Commission on Accounting Higher Education: Charting a National Strategy for the Next Generation of Accountants

Abstract

The Pathways Commission on Accounting Higher Education was created by the American Accounting Association (AAA) and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) to study the future structure of higher education for the accounting profession and develop recommendations for educational pathways to engage and retain the strongest possible community of students, academics, practitioners, and other knowledgeable leaders in the practice and study of accounting. This charge is, by design, expansive in its scope and open to much interpretation. Accordingly, the Commission began its work by developing a number of fundamental principles on which to focus its study, outreach, and the process used to make its recommendations. This introduction highlights some of those principles as a prelude to the summary of recommendations that follow.Pathways Commission participants, including leading accounting practitioners and educators, sought input from a variety of stakeholders over the last 18 months to investigate ways to enhance the opportunities and relevance of the accounting education experience in its broadest sense. This document serves solely as an executive summary of the much more comprehensive report of the Pathways Commission; we encourage readers to explore the full report.To achieve the Pathways Commission's charge, it was important to explore a wide range of perspectives on current and future challenges and opportunities for the profession. For instance, the amount and complexity of information accountants are charged with interpreting, processing, reviewing, and reporting is continuously increasing. While technological advances can surely enable a profession to better address change and meet new challenges, technological change offers a significant set of challenges to both curriculum development and effective learning environments. Economic pressures have always been part of the ebb and flow of challenges that can seem, at times, to be insurmountable obstacles to affecting real and lasting improvements for a profession. Certainly, the recommendations in this report arrive during a very difficult economic climate and are, thus, presented with even greater impediments to change than normal. These and other identified challenges helped to form a path of exploration for the Commission in its deliberations.At the beginning of this exploration, the Pathways Commission adopted a fundamental premise: the educational preparation of accountants should rest on a comprehensive and well-articulated vision of the role of accounting in the wider society. This vision of the role of the accounting profession, which is described more fully in the body of the Pathways Commission report, was instrumental in directing the work of the Commission to consider the profession in its broadest sense. Many individuals are engaged in the practice of accounting, filling a wide range of positions in the public, private, not-for-profit, and government sectors of our economy. The mix of formal education, training, experience, and certification needed differs across these roles. Further, certain functions are regulated by state and federal laws. The development of useful business information, preparation, and attestation to informative financial information and the production of reliable data for management decision-making require that those involved in the information chain have an education commensurate with the challenges and responsibilities inherent in their work.Many readers of this summary and the full report, particularly those in the academic community, will recognize some challenges, impediments, and recommendations that have been discussed in previous studies on the future of accounting education. Recognition of this fact by the sponsoring organizations and the Commissioners at the outset of this undertaking led to the focus in the report on identifying impediments to change and the need for a more focused, continuous approach to affecting change in the profession. Thus, the final recommendation is not directed toward a specific area to be enhanced or changed in the academic or practice communities. Rather, it focuses on establishing an ongoing process to implement these or future recommendations and putting in place the structures and relationships needed to overcome the limitations of periodic efforts to sustain the vitality of accounting education and practice. Studies in the past have surfaced effective ideas and innovations, and incremental changes have been made over time as interested parties have led individual efforts to enhance accounting education. With our history foremost in mind, the Pathways Commission recommendations place significant emphasis on the need for a sustained focus on the many areas that impact accounting education and creating approaches that foster that continuous process.The paragraphs above provide a brief glimpse into the thought process and activities that were a part of this effor