Accounting in Australia: Bridging the gap between education and practice

Accounting is a vocational discipline and the input of industry and professional bodies is important in the design of accounting programs. In fact, professional bodies have been prescribing a required skill set (Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and CPA Australia). As a result, a key focus of the professional accounting bodies and universities is the development of a range of technical and non-technical skills. The Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Statement for Accounting (December 2010) produced as an Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) standards project emphasized the need for professional judgment, knowledge, application of skills, communication and teamwork and personal management skills. These skills enhance the ability of graduates to apply acquired technical skills in a variety of contexts and situations and equip them with life-long learning skills.

The abstract to a current research article notes that: “Universities are being placed under increasing pressure to produce employable work-ready graduates who are able to cope in a rapidly changing work environment. This has resulted in universities offering their undergraduate students the opportunity to gain business acumen and real world experience by undertaking work-integrated learning (WIL) as part of their learning.”

“This paper proposes a three stage framework [see Figure 2 below] to effectively embed WIL into an undergraduate accounting program. Through careful planning and implementation in three accounting courses, students are encouraged to build essential discipline knowledge and transferable generic skills like communication, teamwork and problem-solving. The WIL framework seeks to narrow the expectations gap between industry, academia and students. It supports the development of graduates who can respond to rapidly changing economic circumstances, making them more employable and adaptable at the workplace.”

For more information, read the research article “A work-integrated learning (WIL) framework to develop graduate skills and attributes in an Australian university’s accounting program” by Raymond Leong and Marie Kavanagh, University of Southern Queensland, Australia. The article was published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education, 2013 14(1), pages1-14);