Using an extended professional project to develop professional skills among rural South African accounting students

ABSTRACT

This study examines urban and rural South African accounting students’ perceptions of their professional skills development through participation in an extended professional project (hereafter ‘project’). We find students from the rural-based institutions perceived higher levels of professional skills development than their urban-based counterparts. We argue that this reflects rural students’ hitherto limited exposure to professional role models or their ways of working. This study highlights the significant benefit of using projects to foster professional skills development. Furthermore, this study underscores the need for co-designed projects between institutions (urban and rural) and industry connections to foster greater access to quality education for rural-based students.

KEYWORDS:

• Capacity development; disadvantaged students; extended professional projects
• professional skills
• rural institutions

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 In this study, the partner institution is in an urban area and the recipient institution is based in a rural location. We hereafter refer to the partner institution as an urban-based institution and the recipient institution as a rural-based institution to reflect the focus of this study.

2 The SAICA's core areas are grouped into six categories: (i) Accounting and External Reporting, (ii) Auditing and Assurance (also referred to as ‘Auditing’), (iii) Management Decision-Making and Control (also referred to as ‘Management Accounting’, (iv) Financial Management, (v) Taxation and (vi) Strategy, Risk Management and Governance (also referred to as ‘Strategy’). This is predominantly the same in other jurisdictions (Anjum, 2019).

3 The previous rural-based institution has subsequently obtained SAICA accreditation for its undergraduate accounting programme in 2011 (www.ul.ac.za).