IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joaced/v28y2010i1p13-25.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Will more liberal arts courses fix the accounting curriculum?

Author

Listed:
  • Willits, Stephen D.

Abstract

The appropriate curricular balance between general and accounting education has been long contested and needs resolving as evidence suggests the model used at most schools is broken. One suggested fix would devote more of the accounting curriculum to liberal arts courses to produce accountants who could, for example, think critically and communicate effectively. However, ample evidence indicates that classical “liberal education” scarcely exists today, and what is offered in its place is often counterproductive, at worst, or adds little value at best. This paper reviews the current state of liberal education and concludes that what is actually delivered today by many arts and sciences colleges does not achieve the claimed benefits of a liberal education. Thus it falls on accounting educators to structure courses in ways that will make them exercises in liberal learning. The paper also discusses several strategies for enhancing the value of the general education component of each student’s education.

Suggested Citation

  • Willits, Stephen D., 2010. "Will more liberal arts courses fix the accounting curriculum?," Journal of Accounting Education, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 13-25.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joaced:v:28:y:2010:i:1:p:13-25
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jaccedu.2010.11.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0748575110000564
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jaccedu.2010.11.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Valentin Florentin Dumitru & Andrei Stanciu & Madalina Dumitru & Liliana Feleaga, 2014. "Pressure and Isomorphism in Business Education," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 16(37), pages 784-784, August.
    2. Pan, Peipei & Perera, Hector, 2012. "Market relevance of university accounting programs: Evidence from Australia," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 91-108.
    3. Apostolou, Barbara & Dorminey, Jack W. & Hassell, John M. & Watson, Stephanie F., 2013. "Accounting education literature review (2010–2012)," Journal of Accounting Education, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 107-161.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joaced:v:28:y:2010:i:1:p:13-25. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-accounting-education .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.