To be or not to be: An investigation of accounting students’ career intentions

Purpose–The purpose of this paper is to study accounting students’ intentions to pursue their careers as accountants and modelling this within the context of Malaysian accounting education. Design/methodology/approach–Data were gathered via a questionnaire survey involving undergraduate accounting students. Factor analysis, independent sample t-tests, and multiple regressions were employed. Findings–In total, four findings were derived from this study. First, within the undergraduate accounting programmes, non-commitment towards the accounting profession can still exist. Second, intrinsic interest is a significant predictor of career intentions. Third, the influence of anticipated conflict provides a new finding in relation to accounting students’ career intentions. The last finding is concerned with the influence of internship experience on students’ career intention