Bridging skill gaps and creating future ready accounting and finance graduates: an exploratory study

Literature review

Moffitt listed 30 emerging technologies that will have an enormous impact on jobs and artificial intelligence (AI) was the top of that list.¹ Blockchain has been listed as the 4^th most prominent emerging technology that will impact jobs.² Blockchain platforms resolve the core trust issue by maintaining a shared distributed ledger.^3,4 Smart contracts within a blockchain can enable the transfer of titles, physical goods and assets simultaneously. Given that a sharing economy will be embedded in every financial system by 2020, financial systems will operate like any other sharing economy.

This gives rise to cloud computing which would perhaps have the second highest impact on accounting jobs.⁵ Artificial intelligence (AI) has also found its way into predictive models.⁶ Audit tasks will also benefit from AI, as the use of artificial neural networks (ANN) for audit tasks thus increases the ability to track and uncover control flaws that humans can’t.^4,7 There is a high demand for digital skills, however due to the lack of digital skill sets companies aren’t able to hire a skilled tech-savvy financial workforce.⁸ Employers have demonstrated their disappointment as the digital gap widens among finance graduates.⁹ In a study conducted on 200 accounting and finance firms, where 105 graduate students from different universities were evaluated for their digital know-how, results indicated that these graduate students largely lacked in analytical and other digital skills. Hiring personnel equipped with skills in finance-related software, data analytics, and modelling programs is becoming difficult because of the outdated curriculum, which focuses more on traditional and obsolete concepts.^4,10

Descriptive, prescriptive and predictive accounting

Today’s accounting curriculum is focused on descriptive accounting (see Figure 1).³ Prescriptive accounting is rather limited, with the exception of managerial and cost accounting only (see Figure 2). For example, assets are still recorded and maintained at cost which is not aligned to fair value accounting principles.

Figure 1. Descriptive approach to the bottom-up approach.

Figure 2. Prescriptive approach or top-down approach.

At the operational level most activities can be fully automated. Activities at this level, such as journal entries, are mostly descriptive. The tactical layer requires some level of automation but will mostly be prescriptive (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. From descriptive to prescriptive roles.

Course mapping for digital inclusion

Based on the earlier discussion, we proceeded to attempt to understand how much of these essential digital topics (see Table 1) were embedded in the accounting curriculum, as these tools have been endorsed by the literature. Upon mapping to the existing curriculum of major accredited institutions we found very little or no evidence of these digital tools being embedded into the taught curriculum. Out of 11 teaching technologies or tools we could only partially map one item. Table 1 summarizes our findings.

Study objectives and research questions

The objective of this section was to ascertain technological content gaps with reference to tools discussed earlier within the accounting curriculum offered by higher learning institutions. Additional research questions that this paper aimed to address were as follows:

Ethical approval

Ethical approval was obtained from the research management center at the university. Researchers had to first submit the title of the project, what the author planned to do for the interviews and details of study objectives. The officer at the research management center after reviewing the documents will then issue a letter of clearance for the data collection to be carried out. The approval letter was then obtained, and the reference number of this letter is EA1212021. Consent was obtained verbally prior to the interview and only respondents who were agreeable to be interviewed were approached. The reason for this was this was done in conjunction to a digital transformation workshop in which academics were allowed to express themselves freely about issues and challenges with regards to the teaching curriculum. The review board approved this as it was on voluntary basis.

Awareness of emerging technologies for teaching

Table 3 below shows how much instructors were aware of tools that could be used to teaching emerging arrears. For this section we interviewed 52 people inclusive of subject matter experts and instructors. We selected those who had at least 5 years of teaching experience. In total, 58 % of educators were not aware about most of the technologies discussed earlier.¹¹ Among those who said they were aware, 23% had only superficial knowledge. For instance, some instructors did not know that Bloomberg Lab provided datasets that could be used for big data and predictive analytics.

Antecedents of implementing classroom technologies

Interviewees were requested to rank order factors for the implementation of emerging teaching technologies in the accounting curriculum (see Table 4). Specific reasons that were listed included: 1) training on specific technologies; 2) cost for software licensing; 3) technological resources available (computer labs and hardware); 4) compliance on ministry and accounting body standards; 5) program sustainability; and 6) others.

The most significant factor was assigned six points, followed by the second most significant value with five points and so on. The results show the overall ranking of the reasons that contributed to the antecedents of classroom technology implementation. Data shows that training on specific technologies was the most significant contributor.

Challenges related to implementation of classroom technologies

Table 5 highlights the overall ranking of further issues faced by IHL with regards to the inclusion of classroom technologies into the curriculum. The most important factor was assigned four points, followed by three points for the second most important factor and so on.

Hypothesis testing

Table 6 summarizes key hypotheses that were formulated to facilitate this study. In this hypothesis, the objective is to find out whether the implementation of digital content is desirable, the impact of regulatory requirements and will it improve job possibilities significantly.

The questions that were developed to support the hypothesis are:

Hypothesis 1 - digital content is significant for the accounting curriculum

Overall, 78% of the experts agree that digital content is necessary, 90% of the respondents agree that digital content will yield benefits to accounting graduates, and lastly, 75% of the respondents agree that this should be standard practice. In this context, the hypothesis that digital content is significant for improved accounting curriculum can be accepted.

Hypothesis 2 – regulatory requirements and program standards have a significant relationship with the inclusion of technological content

Out of 80 experts interviewed, 89% agree that regulatory requirements have a significant relationship with the inclusion of technology content. Therefore, this hypothesis can be accepted as well.

Hypothesis 3 –Technological competency is highly desirable among potential employers

Out of 80 respondents, 92.5% agree that competency requirement among potential employers has a significant relationship with the inclusion of technology content in the curriculum. Therefore, this hypothesis can be accepted as well.