Accounting education and educators aren't immune to the challenges that are sweeping the profession, says Yvonne Hinson, president of the American Accounting Association, and they're making changes to address them.
Transcription:
Dan Hood (
Welcome to On the Air with Accounting Today, I'm editor-in-chief Dan Hood. All too many of us imagine that academia exists sort of apart from the real world and that it's more or less frozen in time at whatever point we last engaged with it — no matter how long ago that may have been. But colleges and universities and professors to educators are subject to many of the same sweeping changes that impact the rest of us, to say nothing of their own unique challenges that come from working in academia. This is certainly true of the teachers and educators in accounting, who are wrestling with the pipeline problem, with major regulatory change, with the changing role of the accountant and the economy, and so on and so on and so on. Plus all, as I said, all the challenges that they face as educators and so on.
Here to talk about all that change and what it means for accounting, academia and for the profession overall is Yvonne Hinson. She's the CEO of the American Accounting Association, the national organization of accounting scholars and educators. Yvonne, thanks for joining us.
Yvonne Hinson (
Thank you so much, Dan. Wonderful to be here.
Dan Hood (
Yeah, this is a perspective we don't often get and I think it's super valuable for people to hear about it and to get a sense of where you and your members and accounting educators are coming from. Let's start by just saying what do you think are the biggest issues facing the accounting profession as a whole?
Yvonne Hinson (
Think there are multiple issues facing the accounting profession today. I mean, certainly the one that you hear everybody talk about in almost every conversation that we're engaged in is technology changes and in particular ai. So that is certainly something that all firms, no matter how large or small, are definitely dealing with technology. Changes are happening so rapidly and it's just hard to keep up. So I know we're seeing that with the firms, but we'll see that in academia as well. I think that also there's just been a real rise in cybersecurity threats. We've certainly seen that on the rise staff shortages, which is one of the things that our organization, the AAA certainly works on and tries to deal with the pipeline. Also just global regulatory complexity. I think that there's a lot of complexity out there, a lot of nuances, a lot of things changing, and I think for accountants in general, it's a day-to-day task to keep up with those things
Dan Hood (
And absolutely it's kind of what their clients expect of them. And I will say for that particular aspect, there's one of the things that the core competencies is the profession is that ability to look at a complex regulatory change and digest it and turn around and be able to explain it to clients or if not explain it because clients may not understand it, at least to make it, to show 'em how it applies to them and what they need to do to respond to it, but it still doesn't make it any easier. It is a huge task. Let me ask you, how do you see the profession changing? All those things are in many ways having huge impacts on the way the profession thinks of itself, the way it acts, where you see change in the accounting profession?
Yvonne Hinson (
Well, we're certainly going to continue to see change in the technology area. We talk a lot about chat GPT and cloud and things like that right now, but we don't even know if that's what we'll be talking about next year. So things are just changing so rapidly and that's not going to slow down. The pace of change is actually increasing. One of the other things that I think is occurring is we tend to think about this technology and think something like AI as a technology change, and it is a technology change, but it also is having a big impact on our business processes and our business models, and that's happening at all size firms. It's happening in academia, and so we tend to think of it as technology sort of in a bubble, but it's really not. It's much broader, the impact that it's having.
(
I think that there are going to be be challenges and changes in staffing models for sure, and that's part of the business process model. We are definitely seeing those shortages. While we've had some good news lately in the last couple of years, we can't expect that good news to continue just looking at basic demographics. So we're definitely keeping our eye on that, but I think that we're going to see firms and corporations trying to figure out how they're going to manage all of this change, and when you add together the staffing changes and the technology and the need for more critical thinking, when people are relying more and more on AI to do some of that, I think that that's going to create its own challenges and we're going to see the profession change and evolve as a result of that.
Dan Hood (
That is a spectacular and pretty comprehensive laundry list of all the ways in which the professors changes the factors that are changing again. But let's dive a little bit more deeply into your particular wheelhouse, which is the academic world, particularly the accounting academic world. What are the issues there? What are the big things, or maybe obviously some of the issues you mentioned will play out there, but how will they play out there?
Yvonne Hinson (
Yeah, I think one of the issues that we're certainly facing in academia right now is the questioning of the value of higher education. I mean, at its most basic level, we're certainly hearing a lot about that. There are a lot of things going on in the higher education world, especially in the US right now. So I think that that is something that we're definitely seeing play out, but also academics. They have to respond to what is happening in the professional world. And I love the beginning of the podcast when you said that we often think about the academics from when we were in the classroom. That is so true because I hear all the time they're not changing, they're too slow to change. Things are happening really fast for them too. You're seeing the things in the academic world really mirror what you're seeing happen in the accounting professional world.
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They're grappling with how do we integrate this AI in? How do we teach our students to handle AI ethically and responsibly because that is a big issue as well. How do we make sure that they're career ready? How do we continue to try to teach those soft skills and get those, I like the term life skills more, but you always hear that term, but critical thinking is incredibly important, but so is verbal communication, being digitally agile, not just depending on the technology, but also being very fluent and able to move between technologies. And so these are some of the things that academics are dealing with. At the same time, they're dealing with all of the changes too, the regulatory changes. These are things that we teach in our classrooms, and so I think that that's probably one of the biggest challenges is also how do we fit it all in?
(
How do we get it all in? And we're seeing hours decrease right now all around us. While our profession has gotten increasingly complicated, we are moving to fewer hours. I'm not saying that's necessarily the wrong thing to do. I think it could play out well for the pipeline, but it does create a challenge for academics when you think about how do I get everything that I was getting in 150 hours now and in 120 hours if your students are going on to be CPAs, and then how do I integrate that in all at the undergraduate level? Now for those students that aren't going to go on because you want to support them just as much as you want to support the ones that are going to go on for their masters,
Dan Hood (
Well, there's too much to teach in 150 hours. How are you going to do it in 120? But it's interesting because there is a really interesting parallel. The first thing you mentioned, right, was the people questioning the value of a college education. And we're seeing in the postgraduation issue, there's all kinds of people questioning the value of the CPA a credential. And it's a fascinating sort of thing at a time where I think it's fairly safe to say you look around in the job market, most of the best jobs certainly it almost all the best jobs require a college degree. And yet there is this sort of sense of, well, what's the value of a college degree? Well, it gets you a job and it seems kind of obvious, but there are these questions going on as they say, the same questions going on. What's the point of A CPA? Does it matter? What do you think is driving that? Is it the expense? Is it the uncertainty about the future of the job market, or do people really just not understand the value of a college degree in the job market and not just in accounting institute? I think of the whole economy as a whole, but it's particularly important in accounting where there is so much to learn and there are so many opportunities to further your career through study at the master's level, whatever the case may be.
Yvonne Hinson (
So Dan, I think it's a combination of all of the things that you listed. I don't think there's any one thing. I think that they're just all coming together around the same time, so it feels like a tidal wave sometimes, but I do think that we are seeing the questioning. I think the expense definitely is a part of it. In accounting for a long time we were also seeing questioning of accounting because of the salaries. Now the firms have done a really good job, I think, of bringing the salaries up. The reality is now other areas in business are bringing their salaries up, and so you're always chasing that, and I think that probably does have some impact on it, but the expense is definitely, I think a factor because higher education is getting increasingly expensive, and quite frankly, there's a questioning sometimes of academics. What is the value of all of the research that we're putting out? We're paying them to be not only teachers, but also researchers. And there are a lot of people looking at that and questioning that. We're very fortunate in accounting. I think that a lot of our research, you can point to relevance, it has impact on regulators and standard setters. It's read by the FASB and the ISB and used in their post-implementation reviews, and we've got the stats to show that, but not all areas are able to do that as well, especially in business.
Dan Hood (
Right. Well, it's funny when you said, I was thinking what you were talking about the research done, we occasionally, probably not as often as we should, but we occasionally cover pieces of research that come out that talk about often particularly around audit. There's been a lot of fascinating research over the last couple of years, and I'm sure before that it's just we only really noticed in the last couple of years to talk about all kinds of different aspects of the audit that would be hugely valuable to auditors. And I was like, it's too bad that accountants don't read it. As you say, the standard set is read it, the regulators may read it, but the profession itself could benefit a lot from learning this stuff. But I don't know that that connection is made as often as it should be. I'm sure there's people at the big four who study academic research, but there's all kinds of other firms I don't think know what's going on with academic research into conflicts of interest in auditing the psychological aspects of how do you build an audit team and how do you interact with the client. I've seen reports on all those recently and they were fascinating and I would think would have practical ramifications for the accountants in the trenches, but I don't know that it gets communicated that much. It's good to hear at least that the regulators, are there ways to improve that? Do you think
Yvonne Hinson (
There are ways to improve it? We actually have had some focus groups with practitioners and ask them about the research and they would tell us, you've got very relevant research, but interestingly, one of the things they said is We're not going to read your full research papers, Yvonne. We don't even understand your titles half the time. So I think that's somewhat on us to make sure that we are being concise and putting out plain language summaries. One of the things that we do is we take relevant research and we create podcasts around them with the authors and practitioners talking about the research and why it's relevant and we put out infographics and things like that, but we're not where we need to be honestly. And there are some changes going on in the accreditation world for business accreditation that I think are going to help support us being able to do that in a much bigger way. But I think it's on the associations. It's also on the universities that are paying these faculty to do this research to make sure that they're supporting them by getting it out there in the media and ensuring that it's in a digestible form for practitioners because it's not in its pure research form.
Dan Hood (
Right. Yeah, I mean having tried to go through some of the, we get the cover letter that describes it, the Pressy or the abstract or I have on occasion tried to look at the full text of some of these and it's just these are complicated subjects and so on, but I'm often baffled by it. So I understand some of the practitioners questions about how can they actually understand it, but it's awesome to know that that people are thinking about it, people are looking to make changes. I think there's probably a lot more changes going on inside academia to deal with all of these challenges. I want to dive more deeply into 'em, but first we're going to take a quick break.
Alright, and we're back. We're talking to Yvonne Hinson of the American Accounting Association about the trends and issues facing accounting educators and we've started talking a little bit about how they're reacting to it, which is great. I want to dive more deeply into it. And we talked about half a dozen big issues facing the profession and educators and so I'll let you start wherever you want, but how are they starting to deal with those issues? How are they changing and adapting to face some of the challenges we've talked about?
Yvonne Hinson (
So educators are definitely changing and I'm seeing them integrate new technologies and various ideas that they're hearing from the practitioners into their classrooms at a faster pace than I've probably ever seen it before. But again, I think this is mirroring what's happening in the profession. The profession is moving much more rapidly and so we are having to move very quickly as well. We're very fortunate at the AAA that we have very close relationships with the firms, with many firms and they often attend our conferences and talk to our academics about what's actually going on. So what our academics are doing is they are looking to integrate in, they're creating cases, they're talking to companies, they're talking to firms, and they are integrating all of this technology into their courses. And I think that's critically important because it's so often that I'll get the question, Yvonne, so you want me to put all of this into my course?
(
What do you want me to take out? And that's not the point. The point is not taking anything out. The point is teaching what you're teaching now differently. And it also is very interesting when you'll see a curriculum and you don't see many of these anymore. This is changing rapidly, but you'll see a program where they put in a data analytics or a technology course, and so the students take that course. Well, that's great. It's wonderful to learn it, but you have to learn it in context. If you don't learn it in context, you're not going to understand how to actually utilize it on the job. And so that is what I am seeing a lot of the academics do is look for ways to integrate it throughout their entire curriculum starting with the principles of financial accounting course, and they're talking about best practices now.
(
There's a group called the Future Accountant Stakeholders Organization, and there are about the 13, 14 groups that are associations and firms and organizations that are a member of that. Now they're all working on the pipeline issue and they are working very hard. A subgroup of that. FASA is working very hard to understand best practices in principles also, and they're now teaching that to other academics and they're also working to understand best practices in intermediate too often in the academic world, we always thought of our courses as weed out courses and that was fine. We could do that when we had people sitting in the aisles wanting to get into our classes. But when you can barely fail the front and the second row, that's a problem you can't weed out anymore. You now have to support the students through. So it's not just about the technology, it's also about building a framework around your students to help support that pipeline.
(
And I'm seeing that a lot as well. The other thing I'm seeing is faculty integrate in AI to a large extent, and they're doing it in a way that from what I have seen is very understandable for the students, but it also really helps them grasp that idea of how far can I really go with this? Because you can only go so far. Somebody's got to look at that. We all have stories about hallucinations and you can really get in trouble. We've seen some legal issues around hallucinations. We certainly see hallucinations in our publications area periodically. And so understanding, integrating in that understanding of AI and how an AI agent is something that works alongside you, but that you have to be able to take what it's put out and really analyze it and think critically about it. And I'm seeing some really interesting work going on in those areas.
Dan Hood (
Cool. Very cool. I want to follow up. You had mentioned earlier you talked about people call 'em soft skills, but call 'em life skills I think is a nice twist on that, but there is a lot of talk about how accountants out in the street, out in the wild need to change a set of skills or add more skills than they've had in the past for a bunch of data analytics is one of them, but also communication skills, leadership, collaboration skills, also all those sorts of things. I want to talk about how accounting educators, what kind of skills, how are the skills they need changing or what kind of changes are they making as individuals as opposed to from the program or department or college level? How are the individual educators changing? What skills do they need to bring up?
Yvonne Hinson (
Well, first I would say that I'm not seeing everyone change the way we would like, but I will say that the vast majority of faculty, if you look at programs, most programs, which that's made up of the faculty teaching the courses, most of them have integrated quite a bit of technology and AI into their courses. But the way faculty are doing that individually is they're getting training themselves. And I think gone are the days where you could be the sage on the stage and stand up there and talk about something that very deeply that the students don't know anything about or very little about. I think now we are in a position as academics where we are oftentimes learning alongside our students the technical knowledge, probably not that we have. We've done a deep dive into the technical knowledge, but as rapidly as technology is changing and things like gen ai, we're having to integrate it into our classes very quickly.
(
And oftentimes you are learning alongside your students sometimes, and I think that's perfectly fine, but academics are having to personally get comfortable with that because that is very different than the way we were sort of trained and brought up to be in the classroom. I'm also seeing academics spend a lot more time learning how to really flip the classroom and use that classroom time to work with the students, to work through problems with them. And I think that's a much more effective use of time. So we're seeing a number of faculty, a lot of faculty come in and they're learning everything they can about this. They'll go through training programs on Power BI and Tableau and Python, and then they will take that knowledge of how to do that much like the students need to and they'll start integrating it into their syllabi. And that's where I think I'm seeing some of the biggest changes, but it's just happening faster than it's ever happened before.
Dan Hood (
Yeah, well, I mean this is the curse of the modern era. This is true of every profession, every role, everything for everybody is going way faster than we'd like and it's not stopping. This is one of the weird things is that the change you solve or manage or adapt to today, tomorrow there'll be a different one, a whole different one. And as we look forward, that seems to be where we're headed. I love the first off, I love the phrase sage on the stage. I've never heard that before. That's great. But I love that difference that as long as you're a page ahead of your students, right, you're okay. You just need one page ahead in the textbook. But things are changing so fast that you sort of, there's going to be some points where you're close to. And I also love the notion of the flipping of the using classroom time as opposed to for just pure lecture, use it for more interaction and more working with the students. I wanted to just quickly talk a little bit about the pandemic and the influence that's had in teaching styles and how colleges are thinking about courseware and that sort of stuff. How much of an impact has that had, do you think? Are we just, it was a bump and we're getting past it and moving on to other things or has it been the major change that it has for a lot of other areas of work of life and the economy?
Yvonne Hinson (
It's been a major change and it's sticking. Everybody had to go, of course remote and faculty had to learn how to do that. Some were really great at it because they had been teaching distance learning, they'd been teaching remotely, but the vast majority were not. And many universities actually extended their spring breaks in 2020 for a week so that faculty could learn how to do this. And actually out of all bad things, something good comes. And so I think this is probably one of the things for education that has come about is that we have learned that a lot of that content doesn't have to be delivered or in front. We can deliver it remotely, we can deliver it asynchronously and then use that time. So I think it forced a lot of faculty to flip the classroom that weren't already flipping it. Many already were, and I want to give them credit, but for those that weren't, I think it really showed them how to do that because all of a sudden you needed to use your time when you were, even if it was remote, when you were with your students differently.
(
And I think that that has led to faculty also being more open to, oh, it's okay to change. I don't need my course this year to be like it was last year because everything changed so rapidly for them and I think they got a little bit more comfortable with that. So I would say it's a permanent change that we're seeing and we're definitely seeing a lot more asynchronous and we're seeing a lot more offerings of remote classes or hybrid where some is remote, some is asynchronous and some is in the classroom. So there are so many different models out there, but I think that much like you're seeing in the firms, and I think that could be almost the theme of this, everything that's going on in academia is probably mirrored and in accounting, whether it's public accounting or corporate accounting. But I think you're seeing a lot of the same impact on the academic world that you saw on the business world and the firms
Dan Hood (
And a lot of the same questions coming up, what am I doing here? What's the point? How is this working? What new do, what things need to change? What can we keep? Yeah, certainly it's like I said, everybody's running through these issues and I guess I say I look back on when I went to college and there were none of those options. There was one option, there were lectures and that was it, which is, this is not to question my education, which was great, but none of those changes were available at the time. I'm sure they were going through a different set of changes that I'd never heard about. But it is fascinating to know and I think important to know that these changes had hidden everywhere in the profession. I want to talk a little bit about what the shape of an accounting education will look like.
(
We talked about the change in the 150 hour rules, and I think it's now more than half of states have offered alternatives to it. So essentially it is no longer required. In a lot of states, the expectation is that a lot of other states will follow most if not all will switch, will offer alternatives. Still people can still get 150 hour education if they want, but they won't need it to become a CPA, so that's may well change. We've heard also the National Pipeline Advisory Group did a lot of studies. One of the things that fascinated me was hearing them talk about, I don't think this was necessarily part of the report, but just sort of the discussion they had around it was that they talked to a lot of academics, a lot of people in colleges and universities who suggested that the shape of a college education as a whole might change from a four year to more of a three year or different approaches to that. They thought that was sort of a long-term possibility, but still the notion was what we thought of as an education for so long may change. How do you see that playing out in accounting?
Yvonne Hinson (
Well, I think we're already starting to see a lot of change. I mean, like you said, over 50% of the states now have implemented an alternative pathway. And so the universities in those states and other states, because oftentimes your students go all over the US and globally. So you have to think outside of just your city or your state for sure. And what we're seeing change is right now they're asking themselves what do I need to do to my curriculum to ensure that my students are getting what they need if they don't do the fifth year? Now, I agree with you. I think master's programs will be around, they were around before 150 hours and they will be around. I think that it is going to be the master's programs that deliver a lot of value and can show that. I think those are the ones that are going to stay around, but those were the ones that people were going to before as well.
(
So I don't think that is that different. I do think that they are looking at is there a way to restructure our classes such that or our curriculum, our program, such that we can get the information that they need. Especially if you're CPA focused institution. Not all institutions are CPA focused. Some are more managerial accounting focused, but managerial accounting has a lot more information now too. So information overload is a real thing. And what I'm hearing a lot of institutions say is, look, I'm just not going to able to offer. I'm not going to be able to offer all the disciplines on the CPA exam. It's not going to happen. I have faculty with expertise in these areas and this is what we're going to offer. What I have seen in a couple of instances is universities partnering together. So maybe your university has faculty strength and one discipline and mine has it in another discipline. Is there a way that we can cross our students over maybe remotely and support each other in that? And so I'm seeing some of that and I think that's very creative. We've got to think outside the box with this. There's too
Dan Hood (
Much. Yeah, and I had thought about that, but it's sort of a natural outgrowth of the whole distance learning sort thing like, well, it doesn't matter if the professors are here at this school. They could be anywhere. As you say, this is a ridiculous question and I realize I have no reason to expect you to have this number, but I was thinking about it. Do you have any sense of roughly what percentage of college students are going to school outside their home state? What it would mean if you were studying accounting in one state, but then you're going back and planning on practicing in another or joining a firm in another? What would that mean?
Yvonne Hinson (
Oh, I can't tell you. There are a number of students that end up coming from other states into either a public or especially a private. You'll see all over from a private, and they often are going back to other states. I certainly dealt with this when I was teaching and when I was running a master's in an undergrad program, our students were going all over. So I had to know the requirements for all of the states, and luckily there's some great resources out there. But yes, you do have to know that the program has to know the requirements for all states, and some are a little tougher than others, but you have to assume that your students are going to be going multiple places and more do it as a catchall because you can't only prepare your students for one state. That's
Dan Hood (
Exactly, unless the state is paying you to keep 'em in state minutes, that would be conflict. But they're trying to make sure no one leaves home. That's fascinating stuff. Let me just as a final thought, I mean, we talked a lot about how accounting education will change. How do you see this as a final thought? How do you see accounting careers changing? I mean, so much of it had been involved in education. You talked about master's programs has been around new plenty of MSTs before the 150 hour rule went into place, knew plenty of people with advanced degrees in accounting. How do you see accounting career changing, particularly maybe in terms of education, in terms of learning as it goes across a career? Some people have floated the idea that a new future, you'll go to school for two years when we would now go for four, and then 10 years later you'll take another year and then maybe 10 years later you take another year. How do you see all that sort of thing interacting in the terms of a career in accounting?
Yvonne Hinson (
So I think it's hard to predict exactly what that will look like, but I will say that the one thing that we know for sure is that we're not going to slow the pace of change down. It's just speeding up. And we're definitely going to need to have lifelong learners. And we've been talking to students about that for 20, 30, 40 years. I mean, I think we've always been talking to students about that you have to engage in lifelong learning, especially in a career that is a profession. It's mandatory for many of the certifications and designations. So lifelong learning is a real thing. The impact that it is going to have on your career I think is going to escalate because you are going to have to continually learn new things. But I think it's going to create opportunities for our students too. And once they're out there as professionals, because let's say you get into a job and you're in it three or four years and you say, this is not for me.
(
I think it's going to be perfectly even more natural and normal than it is now, and it already is natural and normal to change, but I think it's even going to be more so because you can pick up new skill sets that we only really found out we needed in technology a year ago, and now all of a sudden you can make yourself an expert. And I think that is what is so interesting for the young career people out there is they have an opportunity right now to be the experts, the room. And I think that's fabulous, and I think it's exciting. I think that this career to me has always been an exciting career. I grew up in an accounting family and an academic family, but it's not the case for everyone. But I think if we tell our story, right, students are going to see, and young professionals are going to see that this career path offers so many opportunities because you can't evolve yourself. I heard 40 years ago, somebody say, I've been at one of the big eight firms at that point in time, and they said, I've been with the same firm and I've had eight different careers. I actually think that's going to escalate. I think it's going to be even more. So I think it's going to provide opportunities for people as they go throughout their career to evolve their career in ways they've never been able to do before.
Dan Hood (
Yeah. I'm glad you highlighted the fact that the ability of young people to become experts these days, because it only seems as if the number of areas in which they could do that in accounting specifically has just is exploding from cannabis to ESG, to crypto, to data analytics. We talked a little bit about all these things are things that no one can be an expert in because they're only five, 10 years old. And so a huge opportunity for young people to do that. And then as you say, also to look across a career that could be 10 different careers rolled into the same area with a lot of opportunity for just pursuing your interest wherever it lies. Alright. Yvonne Hinson of the AAA, thank you so much for joining us. It's a great conversation. We could spend a lot more time obviously talking about all these things, but we're always limited by the clock. But thank you so much for joining us.
Yvonne Hinson (
Thank you so much for having me. It was great to talk with you.
Dan Hood (
Yeah, thank you all for listening. This episode of On the Air was produced by Accounting Today with audio production by Anna Mints. Rate or review us on your favorite podcast platform and see the rest of our contact on