Preparing students for the workplace in developing countries: a study of accounting education in Libya

ABSTRACT

Through qualitative analysis of a dozen semi-structured interviews, this study identifies the issues that limit the ability of accounting education programmes to prepare students for the workplace in Libya, a country in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Factors include: faculty’s lack of practical experience; weak links with the profession; a traditional curriculum; teacher-centred pedagogy; traditional forms of assessment; the number and quality of students; limited or outdated resources; and poor physical infrastructure. As a study of the preparation of students for the workplace in a developing country, which takes account of both faculty and practitioner views, this paper also contributes to the limited literature on accounting education in Libya. Considering the findings through the lens of institutional theory concepts leads to recommendations for options that are likely to be relevant not only to Libya but also to the wider MENA region and other developing countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Undergraduate accounting education
• Libya
• MENA
• developing countries
• institutional isomorphism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Restrictive sanctions were imposed by the UN in 1992 and extended in 1993 in response to terrorist action and assistance to terrorist groups.

2 When it opened in 1955, the University was called the University of Libya, but then re-named the University of Benghazi after a separate university was established in Tripoli. Following Muammar Gaddafi’s military coup of 1969, he named it Garyounis University in 1976. After Gaddafi’s downfall, the name reverted to the University of Benghazi in 2011.

3 For example, Musbah et al. (2016) use existing, oft-cited reviews of empirical studies of ethical decision-making to provide the basis of the literature review for their study of management accountants in Libya.

4 The six journals are: (1) Journal of Accounting Education, (2) Accounting Education: An International Journal, (3) Advances in Accounting Education, (4) Global Perspectives on Accounting Education, (5) Issues in Accounting Education, and (6) The Accounting Educators’ Journal. However, Global Perspectives on Accounting Education was not included in the 2018 review (Apostolou et al., 2019) because it had not been published by the review date. Accounting education research is published elsewhere, but these are considered the prime outlets for such work. Of the four papers on accounting education in Libya reviewed earlier, only one (Ahmad & Gao, 2004) was published in one of the ‘top six’ journals listed here.

5 Apostolou et al. (2019) include a fifth category, ‘instruction by content’, but this represents a level of detail beyond the objectives of this paper.

6 For example, Apostolou et al. (2019) report that 28 of the empirical articles included in their review of accounting education research published in 2018 used surveys, whereas only two used interviews.

7 For the purposes of this paper, the academic interviewees are referred to as ‘educators’. Elsewhere, the generic term ‘faculty’ is used.

8 https://www.iaesb.org/publications/2019-handbook-international-education-standards.