Everything about Master Of Accountancy totally explained
Master of Accountancy (
MAcc,
MAc, or
MAcy), alternatively
Master of Professional Accountancy (
MPAcy or
MPA) or
Master Science in Accountancy (
MSAcy), is a graduate
professional degree designed to prepare students for public accounting and to provide them with the 150 credit hours required by most states before taking the
Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam. Some graduates entering corporate accounting or consulting may pursue the
Certified Management Accountant (CMA), Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) or other certifications by passing a series of exams administered by professional organizations.
This speciality program usually runs one year in length and contains from ten to twelve three semester credit courses (30 to 36 semester hours total). The program may consist of all graduate accounting courses or a combination of graduate accounting courses, graduate tax courses and other graduate business electives.
The Master of Accountancy (MSA) program not only prepares students for the US CPA examination but provides a strong knowledge of accounting principles and business applications.
Accounting Education Falls behind Changes in the Business World
For many years, business relied on accountants only to prepare financial information for decision-makers, to audit the accuracy of that information, and to assist companies in fulfilling regulatory and tax-reporting requirements.
Information was expensive, and understanding how to prepare accurate financial reports required expertise that could only be developed through rigorous accounting education or relevant experience. But times have changed.
Digitization and advanced technology have made data quickly and less expensively maneuverable and communicable. With these technological developments, time, space, and other temporal constraints to information have been reduced and, in many cases, eliminated.
A second major development that has significantly impacted business has been globalization. Faster methods of transportation, together with instantaneous information, have allowed the world to become one giant market place. Consumers can now buy products from foreign firms as easily as they can from a local store.
A third major change is the concentration of power in certain market investors, primarily institutional investors. Armed with easily available and inexpensive information about investees and their competitors, large institutional investors raise the competitive bar very high and shorten the period over which success is measured.
Accounting practitioners acknowledge the changes and agree that technology has made much of what accountants do obsolete. As one accountant said: “What used to be a skill is no longer an important skill and that's true whether accounting is outsourced or whether it's an internal, share service. No matter where it’s done, it's done by somebody’s data processing system. If it’s outsourced, it appears on a screen on your desk. If it’s done by a box underneath your desk, it’s still available on a screen. Now the focus has to be on being able to interpret and use the information provided on the screen.”
Accounting education has unfortunately not been able to keep up with these changes. Too often, accounting practitioners have been very critical of the pedagogy of accounting education. There is too much emphasis on memorization, and tests are based primarily on recall, often termed the “trained monkey’ approach.
Accounting academics are also criticized for their reluctance to engage in creative learning methods that incorporate team work, like practical assignments with real companies, group case analyses and presentations, role playing, and team teaching. Similarly, there's a notable lack of technology-focused assignments and studies of current events. Consider a quote from the AACSB Leadership series which is outspokenly critical: “Although school and faculty competencies have advanced, the gap between practice and academics research and teaching has widened. The lack of business interaction, changing technologies, aging faculty, and shortage of incentives to change, have inhibited faculty initiative for change that's necessary to keep with a rapidly changing environment. The pace of change in the external environment is too high for some faculty and many are not investing in lifelong learning for themselves. Often, they rely too much on old methods and, lacking direct interaction with industry, generate little cutting-edge research that makes a difference to industry.”
Fortunately, some universities have heeded the call for change and are keeping up with shifts in the business world. Some programs have developed carefully planned pedagogies, particularly at the postgraduate level, that develop the critical research, analytical, and problem-solving skills that will outlast today’s accounting rules. These select programs cover topics important in today’s business world and offer curricula up to date with technology and globalization. Rutgers is among them;
transforming accounting education.
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