The Case Against Cooperative Learning.

Accounting educators have presented cooperative learning as a means to teach teamwork skills and improve academic performance. We believe that cooperative learning may lead to inefficient allocation of student time and that this inefficient allocation may reduce student knowledge. Further, by lowering the variance and increasing the means of grades, cooperative learning limits students' ability to signal their quality to potential employers. Both could result in declines in the quality of student attracted to the profession and their knowledge gained in our accounting programs.