Understanding the Accounting Faculty Shortage
It is clear that an accounting faculty shortage poses a significant threat to the accounting profession and needs to be further studied to identify its causes and potential solutions.
This paper is a study to investigate practitioners’ perceptions of the accounting faculty shortage and helps determine factors that might encourage active practitioners to transition into academia.
- Respondents to the associated survey indicate an awareness of some degree of faculty shortage, but it appears they might not fully realize the critical nature of the shortage.
- A potential mechanism for increasing the supply of accounting educators would be to tap the large pool of accounting practitioners as a source of potential new accounting faculty.
Key Insights:
Practitioners represent an important potential source of new accounting faculty. The three most compelling reasons that attract them to a full-time career in academia are:
- Flexibility in work schedule.
- Satisfaction from helping students.
- Participating in developing the profession through educating young professionals.