Anti-Fraud Education in Academia

Leaders in the accounting profession are calling for more anti-fraud education of accounting students, due in large part to the recent spate of corporate scandals involving accounting frauds. Prior research indicates that very few universities offer significant fraud-related education in their accounting curriculum. Accordingly, accounting academics should revise the curriculum to include a mandatory course in fraud examination. Those educators who fail to adopt such a course will continue to graduate students who are ill prepared to meet the challenges of an increasingly unethical business world. To assist instructors committed to offering a dedicated course in fraud examination, this paper examines a comprehensive fraud examination course that has evolved and matured over the past several years. We describe the course enrollments, objectives, content, assignments, and grading. Specific course materials, such as PowerPoint slides and a comprehensive final exam, are available from the second author upon request