The Expectation Performance Gap in Accounting Education: A Review and Comparison of Generic Skills between University Undergraduates and Chartered Accountancy Students

Abstract

Today accounting educators have been criticized that accounting graduates and chartered accountants do not possess the generic skills to a standard level. Given this backdrop, the main objective of this study is to compare and consider the perspective of accounting undergraduates and professional accounting students’ perceptions of the extent to which opportunities for generic skills development are exploited in Government University accounting degrees and chartered accountancy professional qualification. Generic skills are determined on the basis of prior studies and the models and a structured questionnaire was developed to ascertain the skills. Accordingly, 70 accounting undergraduates from government universities and 75 professional accounting students from chartered accounting qualification were responded to the study. Under quantitative approach to analyze the data mean ranking and the independent sample t-tests were used. The results indicate that government university educators and chartered accountancy educators should focus more on developing personal skills, inter-personal: leadership skills, interpersonal: communication skills, written communication skills. The results of satisfaction on internship time period shows that chartered accountancy course allocates sufficient time period for the generic skills development.