An Empirical Assessment of the Rise and Fall of Accounting as an Academic Discipline
48 Pages Posted: 26 Mar 2007
Date Written: November 2006
Abstract
The history of accounting as an academic discipline is a short one. Although the study of accounting in institutions of higher education is roughly coextensive with the rise of the business school, the need for a dedicated group of full-time faculty in this area is not as well-established as other business disciplines. The paper pertains to the recent trajectory of the accounting professoriate. Disciplinary success should be evidenced by the broader recognition of importance, high demand for its work, and the numerical increase of its practitioners. Although the value and importance of accounting is a maintained hypothesis within the field, how accepted this idea is in the business school is an empirical question. This paper illustrates the number and distribution of accounting faculty over a twenty-year period through the consideration of a number of specific research questions. The results show that after a decade-long increase, the number of the full-time accountancy faculty in the USA in the last decade has declined. This decline is not uniform, but instead is patterned in ways that raise further doubts about the future of the discipline.
Keywords: accounting education, accounting doctoral programs, accounting teaching, business education, tenured professor, accounting department prestige
JEL Classification: M40, M41, M49
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Publishing in the Majors: A Comparison of Accounting, Finance, Management, and Marketing
-
Concentration in Publishing at Top-Tier Business Journals: Evidence and Potential Explanations
By Edward P. Swanson, Christopher J. Wolfe, ...
-
Publication Records of Faculty Promoted at the Top 75 Accounting Research Programs
By Steven M. Glover, Douglas F. Prawitt, ...
-
Ranking Accounting Ph.D. Programs and Faculties Using Social Science Research Network Downloads
-
Characterizing Accounting Research
By Derek Oler, Mitchell Oler, ...
-
Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area and Methodology
By Joshua G. Coyne, Scott L. Summers, ...
-
Individual Accounting Faculty Research Rankings by Topical Area and Methodology
By Jeffrey S. Pickerd, Nathaniel M. Stephens, ...
-
Accounting Doctoral Program Rankings Based on Research Productivity of Program Graduates
By Nathaniel M. Stephens, Scott L. Summers, ...
-
Accounting Ph.D. Program Graduates: Affiliation Performance and Publication Performance