TY - JOUR

T1 - An investigation into accounting and business students’ employability beliefs

AU - Kercher, Kim

AU - Todd, James

AU - Gill, Chelsea

AU - Bennett, Dawn

AU - Gepp, Adrian

PY - 2024/4/4

Y1 - 2024/4/4

N2 - The accounting profession is challenged by professional shortages,declining university enrolments, and uncertainty about the profile offuture accountants regarding technological advancements. It is thustimely to investigate the employability beliefs of accountingstudents in higher education throughout Australia. This studyemployed a multi-factor self-assessment of perceivedemployability (PE) grounded in social cognitive career theory toinvestigate the PE of accounting students (n= 3116) relative toother business students (n= 4973), and across degree progression.Compared with their business peers, accounting students reportedgreater program awareness, but their perceived communicationskills, emotional intelligence, and ethical and responsible behaviourwere lower than their business peers. Accounting students becamemore likely to reconsider their choice of program as theyprogressed, with accounting students in their third year or later lessconfident in terms of self-awareness, program awareness, theperceived relevance of their program, and their perceived ethicaland responsible behaviour. The discipline-specific comparisonsextend previous research and indicate that employability initiativesshould be embedded early in accounting curricula to enhancestudents’PE, career understanding, and related skillsets. Thepotential to enhance accounting students’PE, and thus improveacademic achievement, persistence, and employment outcomes isrelevant to educators, curriculum managers and accreditation bodies

AB - The accounting profession is challenged by professional shortages,declining university enrolments, and uncertainty about the profile offuture accountants regarding technological advancements. It is thustimely to investigate the employability beliefs of accountingstudents in higher education throughout Australia. This studyemployed a multi-factor self-assessment of perceivedemployability (PE) grounded in social cognitive career theory toinvestigate the PE of accounting students (n= 3116) relative toother business students (n= 4973), and across degree progression.Compared with their business peers, accounting students reportedgreater program awareness, but their perceived communicationskills, emotional intelligence, and ethical and responsible behaviourwere lower than their business peers. Accounting students becamemore likely to reconsider their choice of program as theyprogressed, with accounting students in their third year or later lessconfident in terms of self-awareness, program awareness, theperceived relevance of their program, and their perceived ethicaland responsible behaviour. The discipline-specific comparisonsextend previous research and indicate that employability initiativesshould be embedded early in accounting curricula to enhancestudents’PE, career understanding, and related skillsets. Thepotential to enhance accounting students’PE, and thus improveacademic achievement, persistence, and employment outcomes isrelevant to educators, curriculum managers and accreditation bodies

M3 - Article

JO - Accounting Education

JF - Accounting Education

SN - 1468-4489

ER -