Toward a New Design for the Intermediate Accounting Course.

Abstract The article focuses on a new design for the intermediate accounting course. One who sets out to review financial accounting textbooks will likely conclude that accounting educators are in virtually unanimous agreement on the manner, in which accounting information should be organized, classified and sequenced for delivery to students. Not only do all major intermediate accounting texts adopt virtually identical plans of organization, but also that plan is the same as that used in most introductory texts. The plan, well known to accounting educators, is that after initial chapters devoted to general aspects of the balance sheet and income statement, the text proceeds to have chapters on each of the major balance sheet and income statement accounts, that is, the chapter titles read like the financial statements themselves: cash, accounts receivable, inventories, fixed assets, current liabilities and so on. The similarity of organization in introductory and intermediate texts gives students the impression that intermediate accounting is just principles a little deeper.