Prospectives_and_Challenges_in_Accounting_Education_in_Nigeria

THE PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES IN ACCOUNTING EDUCATION IN NIGERIA. BY BABALOLA, Yisau Abiodun (PhD Student) Accounting and Auditing Department Volodymyr Dahl East Ukrainian National University, Ukraine E-mail: babayisau@gmail.com Tel. No: +380637333596 Abstract This study employed the empirical survey to investigate the educational system at the higher institutions and professional levels in Nigeria. The role of Nigerian higher institutions is significantly provoked development of accounting profession. The educational system has evolved, but the relationship between the profession and the universities continues to be problematic for the accounting profession to achieve its goals in Nigerian economic development. There is a weak nexus between instruction, practice and research, lack of balance of theory and practice in curriculum, University rules and regulations are rigid and no dedicated effort for doctoral research. Accounting professional bodies are at rivalry and have little linkage with existing research findings and innovations in accounting. What is required is a dynamic development of curriculum, a good synergy of research and practice in Accounting. Key Word:Prospects and Challenges; Accounting Education/Profession; Higher institution’s Curriculum Introduction: There are emerging concerns on how accounting profession should evolve itself to satisfy better the needs for professional development and of the society. It is a very fundamental question for accounting educators to purse and assess the extent of accounting research conducted and the nexus to quality of teaching and practice in accounting profession. Ruche (2007) opines that despite recent advances in the study and knowledge of the accounting profession, there has been very little research along these lines in developing countries. This is in part because of the relative youth of the accountancy profession. Historically, they have been a weak interaction between an academic group and professional group. Everett (2002) notes that the two sets of players occupy a field where they “attempt to usurp, exclude and establish monopoly over the field’s reproduction and type of power effective in it. The professional group uses a series of strategies to ensure “the reproduction of social inequality” (Bourdieu &Passeron, 1990) in spite of the academic unit’s appearance of meritocracy and equity. This has contributed negatively to the development of accounting profession worldwide. It becomes necessary, not only to trace back often the development of our own accounting education system, but also to verify whether we are developing and evaluating methods that test accounting concepts, practices and theories and obtaining knowledge for practical purposes that solves accounting problems. If the accounting research may have lagged behind the western practices, what can Nigerian accountants, educators, researchers and the governments do to develop accounting in Nigeria to contribute maximally in Nigerian quest for economic breakthrough by Muhammed A.S and Suleiman A.S (2010). Accounting Education System in Nigeria: The process of educating accountants in Nigeria emphasizes university-based training and internship with professional bodies. Nigerian universities provide a variety of programmes that are accessible to all students who meet the required entry standards. The apparent demand for accounting education, as evidenced by the number of students, has continued to grow significantly since Nigerian universities started offering complete undergraduate accounting courses. Since 1948 when university education started in Nigeria, Nigeria currently has almost total numbers of 103 Universities, which are 27 Federal universities, 31 State universities and 45 private universities and most them now have a faculty of Management (or Social or Administration) and within that Faculty there is an Accounting Department some alone and others in conjunction with areas such as finance. Students in the management faculty earn degrees in accounting. One of the most significant challenges for an Accounting Department is to decide which specific courses should be required for the degree. This is largely an issue of breadth versus depth but they observe the basic minimum standard established by the National Universities’ Commission which regulates university education in Nigeria. Many accounting academics would prefer students to take a wide range of management and non-management courses as there are good arguments to support the idea that future accounting professionals would benefit from a wider liberal arts programme. On the other hand, Accounting Departments are under pressure to provide a depth of coverage of accounting concepts and procedures through quite specific accounting courses. Many accounting academics argue that an accounting degree would be incomplete if it did not, at least, include courses in financial accounting, management accounting, auditing and taxation. Since many of the students intend to pursue careers in the accounting profession, there is collaboration with professional bodies to align courses of study with what is obtainable in the Institutes. This strategy of indirectly imposing the Institute’s requirements on the university is done through accreditation of universities’ accounting programmes. The pressure to satisfy the Institute’s requirements is manifested indirectly through the students’ desire to receive not just a degree, but a degree that also includes an exemption from their specific courses or stages. Related to the problem of which courses to require for graduation is the issue of how accounting courses should be taught. Individual faculty members and the Department as a whole must decide whether to emphasize more conceptual or more procedural aspects. The challenge is whether a course should be more theoretical or more practical in nature. This is an issue in all accounting courses. Arguments can be made in support of each approach. Usually, a compromise is reached with a balance of conceptual and procedural material being included. The faculty attempts to justify the value of theory to the student’s long term career prospects, the typical accounting student appears to be more interested in learning specific procedures so that they can immediately be of value to their potential employers. Professional accounting practices have grown significantly in Nigeria. It began with the transformation of Association of Accountants in Nigeria, which was incorporated in 1960, into the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) in 1965. Since then there has been major proliferation of accounting bodies which include the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN) and the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN), which have both achieved Government recognition, now represent accountants as well as ICAN. This has threatened the monopoly hitherto enjoyed by ICAN. Rather than collaborating to promote accounting professionalism, it has been rivalry, litigations and a struggle for supremacy. Membership of Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) has grown over the years. Ruche (2007) avers that the failure of ICAN to provide enough accountants at all levels to aid Nigeria’s economic development became the most compelling reason for the proliferation of accounting bodies. Further proliferation attempts led to legislative attempts for the establishment of the Chartered Institute of Cost and Management Accountants (CICMA) and Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Nigeria (ICPAN) in 2005. What is desirable is the growth of accounting professionalism along accounting areas of expertise than different institutes promoting same practices of auditing and taxation that has been the preoccupation of ICAN members. The monopoly of ICAN since 1965 has hindered development in other spheres of accounting like government accounting and management accounting. Again ICAN membership has little content of membership of the academia thus the symbiosis of research and practice is non-existent. Compared to ANAN with over 90 percent of 13 professors of accounting in Nigeria and largely made up of accounting graduates as members. Concept of Professional development: There exist different theories that explain the concept of professional development. The functionalist theorists argue that professions can only emerge when a group of people are found to be practicing a definite technique founded upon specialized training (Greenwood, 1957). They are seen as coming together as a group in order to mutually guarantee their competence and to maintain a high standard of professional character and honorable practice (Carr-Saunders, 1928). Functionalists see the profession as an occupation, which is pursued largely for others and not merely for oneself (Barber, 1963). Functionalist theorists emphasize the belief that professionals acquire the recognition of the society because of the specialized skills they possess and the close solidarity of its members (Halmos, 1970). They are not self-centered bodies and are seen to act in the interests of the general community (Marshall, 1939). Although some of these functionalists are aware of the complexity of social organisations and the possibility that the acquisition of skills may not be the only determining factor in deciding members of any given profession, they do not consider it material (Ruche, 2007). With time however, this view began to change and more scholars started assigning more weight to the complexity of social organizations and the possibility that competence and community service may not be the only explanatory variables for the emergence of professions. This was the origin of the ‘interactionist’ theory of professions. People began to pay more attention to the process, rather than the product of professionalising (Timperley and Osbaldeston, 1975). It is characteristic of the growth of specialities that early in their development they carve out for themselves and proclaim unique missions. Uche (2007) posits that they issue a statement of the contribution that the speciality, and it alone, can make in a total scheme of values and, frequently, with it an argument to show why it is peculiarly fitted for this task. The statement of mission tends to take a rhetorical form, probably because it arises in the context of a battle for recognition and institutional status. Based on such assertions, more scholars started to move from a normative view of professions, i.e. what a profession should be, to a positive view of the professions i.e. what a profession actually is (Roth, 1974). Interactionists thus argue that professions mainly strive to protect their group’s interests, which sometimes conflict with the interest of the wider society. The only way such groups could gain legitimacy was thus by convincing the wider society that they could offer some kind of special skill (Boreham, 1983). Some interactionists have also challenged even the claim of homogeneity within professions (Smith, 1958). Along these lines, it has been suggested that (Bucher and Strauss, 1961): The assumption of relative homogeneity within the profession is not entirely useful: there are many identities, many values, and many interests...They tend to become patterned and shared; coalitions develop and flourish-and in opposition to some others. Interactionists have, however, been criticised on the grounds that they are indifferent to evidence and proof. Although their claims are usually plausible, it is not always evident that they are backed by empirical evidence (Saks, 1983). Furthermore, although interactionist scholars acknowledge the entwinement of politics in the professionalization process, they generally fail to explore the structural conditions under which various professional groups are liable to be successful (Willmott, 1986). In the attempt to enhance an understanding of the process and functioning of professions, some scholars have devised a more critical approach rooted in neo-Weberian principles. Scholars of the neo-Weberian mode attempt to apply the Weberian concept of social closure to the development of professions. This notion of social closure broadly defines a situation where an interest group seeks to regulate market conditions in its favour by restricting access to specific opportunities to group members. This is usually done in the face of actual or potential competition from outsiders (Parkin, 1979). In other words, it is a process by which social collectivities attempt to maximise their reward by restricting access to certain economic and social opportunities to members (Johnson, 1977). These neo-Weberian scholars mainly focus on the various barriers that professions have erected in order to ensure social closure. Such barriers include examination, apprenticeship and entry qualification rules. Many neo-Weberians have, however, been accused of failing to empirically substantiate their claims. Their studies therefore offer few improvements over those of the interactionists (Ruche, 2007). The structural conditions under which professionalization occur clearly require more stringent examination. Proponents of this school also have not taken enough care in ensuring that their accounts of the current nature and role of professions in society are empirically sustainable. Far too often, therefore, what amount to thinly veiled attacks on professions and professionals have been presented without adequate supporting evidence (Saks, 1983). The relationship of the State and the profession is usually dynamic and complex. In some cases, laws have been put in place to bring the profession under the control of the State (Wallace, 1992), as in the Nigerian case. Such professions, thus, ultimately depend on the power of the State to protect their domain of ‘expertise’ (Larson, 1977). Methodology: The survey focused on research output areas, postgraduate training/research opportunities, academic staff time utilization structure, and academia-practitioner linkage, 451 academic staff in accounting departments were randomly selected for this study and out of these 27were having practicing firms for over twenty years of experience in practicing as professional bodies, officials of Nigerian Accounting Standards Board, and National Universities’ Commission. A simple descriptive tool of analysis was employed to present the facts in understandable manner. Results and Discussions: The capacity for accounting research in Nigerian universities is being evaluated through a survey the teaching faculties in Nigerian universities, postgraduate training/research opportunities, flexibility of curricular content, rate of accounting graduate turnover, research output in accounting areas, University Academic Staff, Time Utilization structure and evidence of Academia-Practitioner collaboration. Table I Survey of Teaching Faculty in Accounting in Nigerian Universities Ranks No. Percentage Professor 13 2.9 Associate professor 11 2.4 Senior lecturer 20 4.4 Upper cadre 9.7 Lecturer I 79 17.5 Lecturer II 111 24.6 Assistant Lecturer 130 28.8 Graduate Assistant 87 19.4 Lower cadre 90.3 451 100 Source: Field survey data (June, 2010). The academic cadre is bottom heavy with about 90.3% of the staff occupying the lower cadre and only 9.7% occupying the upper cadre. This will have impact on the accounting graduates that will be available for accounting profession and the depth of research that will be undertaken. Table 2 Postgraduate training/research opportunities in Accounting Sample (No. of Universities Undergraduate % Masters Doctoral Postgraduate (%) 92 71 77.2 11 6 23.9 Source: Field survey data (June, 2010). Table 3 University Academic Staff Time Utilization structure Total Hours per week Academic Administrative (%) Lectures (%) Research (%) Community services (%) 40 hours 52 17 15 26 Source: Field survey data (June, 2010). A total of 40 working hours is computed using 8 hours daily work hours between Monday and Fridays. A survey of randomly selected academic staff of accounting departments in Nigerian universities depicts the time utilization structure in (Table 3). 52% of the time is used for delivering lectures. Community services include services to the society including practical experiences that may be useful in the class and for research. However, research occupies only 17% of an academic’s staff time. This may account for the low research output in Table 3. Table 4. Evidence of Academia-Practitioner collaboration Responses Research sponsorship Research results application Others (Accreditation, Mandatory training programme, etc Always (100%) Mostly (more than 80%)  Some-times (between 20% and 80%)  Never (less than 20%)  Source: Field survey responses (June, 2010). There was a nil response on research results application. The present states of collaboration are through accreditation programmes undertaken by professional bodies to allow exemption for their professional examinations and mandatory continuing professional development programmes in which academic staff members of such professional bodies participate annually. Conclusion: This paper examines the prospects and challenges in Accounting Education with the influence it requires to impact on the accounting profession. The level of economic, social and political development of any country usually determines the accounting needs of that country. The weaknesses in Nigerian accounting education can be explained by the quite low education level of teaching staff, if bachelor graduates can carry out teaching tasks due to the absence of enough postgraduate training. However, several universities have already a teaching staff constituted principally undergoing Ph.D and masters’ programmes. This situation is still worsened by the brain drain of high-level graduates or even of teaching staff towards better paid sectors. Recommendations: Unless we have the foresight to reinitiate oversees postgraduate training linkages as was the case in 1970s and find ways of attracting at least 5 percent of the brightest students in each year’s class to scholarly careers, Nigeria would have no hope of being able to compete in the world awash in talent and better educational systems. There is need for the Nigerian indigenous accounting bodies to re-invent themselves in order to remain relevant by collaborating with the academia, encouraging and training accounting expertise in areas most relevant to their economic development. References Barber, B. (1963), ‘Some Problems in the sociology of Professions’, Daedalus: journal of the American Academy of Arts and Science. Boreham, P. (1983), ‘Indetermination: Professional Knowledge, Organization and Control’, The Sociological Review, November. 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