Accounting for change - Kansas City Business Journal:

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On the one hand, switching to International Financiakl Reporting Standards will bring the United States in line with more than 100 including allof Europe. On the other, the shiftf will necessitate a massive curriculum overhaul in Americanh colleges that prepnew CPAs. That kind of institutionakl change can be aclunky undertaking. CPAs and the professors who teachb them have been doing business undert Generally Accepted Accounting Principles forseven decades. The “generally accepted” part appliese to the U.S. where the unique system of financial reporting has pilede rule on top of rule to accumulatse nine inches of wisdomin width.
The internationao standards, by contrast, are only two inchea thick, which should come as a welcome statisticf forcollege students. The standards are described as more which would mean a shift in accountant trainingh froma fact-finding discipline to an analyticakl one. Dmitri Shiry, a partner at , describes it like “The profession is going from multiple choice to an And it’s moving full speed ahead, he The urgency comes from an August decision from the to pursue a towards adopting the international standards as earlgy as next year for some public companies. Talk of converging U.S.
GAAP and IFRS has been around for with the and the SEC attemptingy to blend international rules withthe nation’x standards. So it came as somewhat of a jolt when the SEC announcedr it would begin an IFRS evaluation processw with the goal of adoptingy the standards and mandatinvg all public companies to use themby 2014. That’ws a lot to cram for the nation’ds accounting professors. A survey of 535 accounting professors this summer showed that fewer than a quarteer felt comfortable integrating IFRS into their teaching practice thisacademic year. More than half said that they had made no substantiak plans todo so, according to the survey, which was conducteed by the and .
Professor Joni Young, chaier of the accounting department at the Anderson School of Managementr atthe , says Anderson is well aware of the impendinv changes and is working to incorporate more instruction on internationalk standards into the curriculum. However, she it has been difficult todo so, in part becauss the details of the merged standardas have not been fully worked out, but also because it is uncleare how much the new standards will impact accounting for non-public which dominate in New Mexico. Younb says there is likely to bea trickle-dowbn from the new standards for the privated companies and nonprofits that make up most of this state’as business community.
But how much, at least so far, is She also noted that the move towardx convergence could be sloweddown — or sped up — by the current financial crisis. That said, Anderson still appears to have a jump on many ofits “One of the things you have to understan d is that at schools like Anderson, with a separatde accounting accreditation, the has pushed schoolz to start to highlight the difference between GAAP and Young says. “That’s something we’ve begunh to add in our intermediateaccounting classes, and it will becomr more refined over time.
” Young noted the school already has an international accounting taught once a year for master’s degree studentsz — something that is not includedr in many schools’ programs. Because the terrain ahear is stillso undefined, for now she doesn’t detail for students how the change will impact them, but just tell s them that “yes, it does matter.” Some accounting firms, anxiouz for future recruits to be familiar with the new standards, are beginningy to take the matter into their own Last August, Pete Mendes, an audit partner with KPMG who coordinates the firm’s recruiting effort at the , led two handfuls of Pitt professors through an introductory session on this month, he will make a serieas of appearances before juniors and seniors in Pitt’ws accounting program.