Abstract The article focuses on the interactions between the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the academic community. The educational interactions that people have with the academic communities are largely one way. There are a significant number of ways in which the FASB influences accounting education, some of which are fairly apparent and others of which are perhaps less apparent. More and more of intermediate accounting seem to be devoted to learning the rules and less and less to critically analyzing those rules or addressing newer areas in which no rules yet exist. Because conceptual analysis and critical thinking endure much longer than individual accounting standards, students run the risk of becoming functionally obsolete not long after they graduate. Students will need to be able to deal with rules as well. But that does not necessarily mean that students should continue to study rules in the same way that is done today. Some rethinking of the rule-based part of the curriculum may be in order, too, if for no reason other than to keep the curriculum from exploding in length.
Beresford et al. (Fri,) studied this question.