The education and practice gap of accounting

Educators nowadays may equip students for jobs that will not exist in the future (Shusterman, 2015) or jobs that do not exist yet. Many students face confession after graduating from tertiary education. Not knowing what to expect, wondering if they can use what they learn from school at work (Elmes, 2017). This paper aims to gather the opinion of accounting students regarding what they think are the demanded skills to get an accounting job after the completion of education. After reviewing the literature, a questionnaire was produced and sent to students at a tertiary institute to gain their opinion. Results were then compared to the skills required in practice by employers when recruiting. The key findings this study obtained were that there is a gap between what soft skills students think is important for an accounting position compared to that of practitioners’ view as stated by other researchers. Results indicate there is little difference of required hard skills (accounting techniques) from view points of students and professionals. Further studies should be done with larger samples to generalise more widely. Recommendations are that tertiary schools can partner with local business and accounting firms to provide internship program for all accounting major students. Also students should communicate with other accounting students, possible seniors or past students to gain their thoughts on what is currently lacking in the school education