Presidential Address "Accounting Education: Challenges and Opportunities"

The article presents an addressing speech towards outgoing president of the American Accounting Association, Ray Sommerfeld, for the year 1987-88. The author focuses on a personal perspective on challenges and opportunities and a perspective on accounting education. A view of accounting education is discussed. The purpose of a discussion of personal perspective is introduced here to help provide a foundation for author's other remarks with respect to accounting education as a whole, and to take advantage of a unique opportunity for a form of communication which is more personal than textbooks or articles in the professional journals. Over the past 20 years, there have been tremendous strides in accounting research. They have occurred in information economics, capital markets, and behavioral sciences, among others. With respect to information economics, it has permitted accounting research to move beyond a perspective of income measurement under certainty as a prime basis for accounting theory.