Changing the Accounting Curricula: Which Colleges and Universities Will Accrue the Higher Economic Costs?

Abstract This study seeks to identify those costs and those schools affected by the accounting curriculum changes recommended by the Accounting Education Change Commission (AECC 1991) and created by the new standards of the American Assembly of the Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB 1993). The de-specialization of accounting curricula debate and its authorities are re-examined, and its costs are reconsidered. In order to identify the affected schools, this study uses government accounting course work as a proxy for course specialization. It then analyzes a recent report (Dittenhofer and Sennetti 1994) and its follow-up study on the status of government accounting at 492 of the major schools. It extends this report, and concludes that certain schools are likely to be more affected than others by the costs to de-specialize accounting education. We find that private, AACSB, research-funded institutions are more likely to offer less government accounting course work and, therefore, these schools are less affected by the economic costs to de-specialize their curricula under the AECC recommendations. All public schools, and in particular, public (and certain private), non-AACSB schools which are not classified as Research I or II by the Carnegie Foundation (1987), are more likely to offer specializations and to pay the correspondingly higher costs to change their curricula. These results are timely in light of the ongoing adoption of the new AACSB (1993) standards that affect other specialized accounting programs, such as those with extensive offerings in internal and external auditing. Although affected by the changing standards, the AACSB schools will be less affected by the AECC recommendations since these schools are less specialized.