The Teaching of Ethics in Undergraduate Accounting Programmes: The Students' Perspective

Abstract

This paper solicits the views of students in order to assess the goals and effectiveness of the teaching of ethics in undergraduate Accounting programmes. Using a survey and interviews, the opinions of second-year undergraduate students at a UK university were obtained. Their perception of the aims and importance of ethics and their preferred means of teaching delivery are established. The results appear to show that students regard ethics teaching as being important to them and that a stand-alone ethics course is preferred to integrated teaching across the curriculum. In particular, students describe the benefits of a compartmentalised approach to their learning with ethics ‘all in one place’. Possible reasons for students' choices are given and discussed and, from the level of importance attributed to ethics learning, it is concluded that ethics should be treated as part of a wider employability agenda for students, to help them in their future careers.

Keywords:

• Ethics
• teaching
• employability

Notes

A large number of former ‘polytechnics’ were converted to full university status in 1992. These, together with those formed since then, represent the newer ‘post-1992’ group of universities in the UK.

A module represents a particular course or unit of study as part of a university degree programme. Each module has a number of credits associated with it (normally 20) and the student is required to successfully complete 360 credits over a three-year period in order to obtain an honours degree. The students sampled were all studying for Bachelor of Arts (BA) degrees in Accounting- and/or Finance-based subjects.

Ethics approval had been obtained from the university for the student survey and interviews.

Within the academic institution used, ethics is taught as parts of other modules, such as financial reporting, taxation and auditing.

The student had just commenced the third year and had not yet undergone any particular ethics teaching in that academic year.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alan Graham

This paper was edited and accepted by Richard M. S. Wilson.