Australian Accounting Education

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Accounting education does not just focus on producing accounting professionals, but it is also seen as an introductory gateway to a broader array of potential careers in business and management (O’Connell et al., 2015). In that sense, accounting, per se, serves as both a key component in business education and a major impact on organisations and society. Since the beginning of the century, numerous rising trends associated with commoditisation of education, coupled with the advance of technology and globalisation, have been influencing and changing the state of play of accounting education system within the realm of Australian higher education, and brought serious concerns regarding the sustainability of the system to both researchers and practitioners …show more content…

According to a study of Laswad and Tan (2014), Australian higher education has become a major export business of the nation over the past decade with the significant increase of international students enrolled into tertiary business education, while the demand for accounting degrees from international students has been volatile, the number of domestic enrolments is declining. The situation is worsened by the fact that many international students, upon completion of their accounting degrees, have struggled to find a full-time job in Australia, be it in the field or in other businesses (Arkoudis et al., 2009). This trend can be attributed to the gap between actual skills of accounting graduates and the expectation of employers. In particular, an investigation into the accounting employment market carried out by Jackling and de Lange (2009) showed that employers tend to expect new graduates to possess not just their qualification knowledge but also professional skills such as teamwork, interpersonal skills, and leadership potential, which are often unmet by freshly accounting …show more content…

On the contrary, the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency reported (2014) that the demand for accountants through skilled migration was on the rise, accompanied by the increase of occupation ceiling for accountants in the Skilled Occupation List in recent years, signaled a promising future for accountants. However, whether this would benefit accounting graduates is still open to

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