Over many decades the global development of professional accounting education programmes has been undertaken by higher education institutions, professional accounting bodies, and employers. These institutions have sometimes co-operated and sometimes been in conflict over the education and/or training of future accounting professionals. These ongoing problems of linkage and closure between academic accounting education and professional training have new currency because of pressures from students and employers to move accounting preparation onto a more efficient, economic and practical basis. The Interface of Accounting Education and Professional Training explores current elements of the interface between the academic education and professional training of accountants in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK. It argues for a reassessment of the considerations and requirements for developing professional accounting programs which can make a student: capable of being an accountant (the academy); ready to be an accountant (the workplace); and professional in being an accountant (the professional bodies). This book was originally published as a special issue of Accounting Education: An International Journal.

Over many decades the global development of professional accounting education programmes has been undertaken by higher education institutions, professional accounting bodies, and employers. These institutions have sometimes co-operated and sometimes been in conflict over the education and/or training of future accounting professionals. These ongoing problems of linkage and closure between academic accounting education and professional training have new currency because of pressures from students and employers to move accounting preparation onto a more efficient, economic and practical basis. The Interface of Accounting Education and Professional Training explores current elements of the interface between the academic education and professional training of accountants in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK. It argues for a reassessment of the considerations and requirements for developing professional accounting programs which can make a student: capable of being an accountant (the academy); ready to be an accountant (the workplace); and professional in being an accountant (the professional bodies). This book was originally published as a special issue of Accounting Education: An International Journal.

The history of the role of CAEs in Australian accounting education is written against a backdrop of several decades of turmoil in higher education in Australia. Accounting struggled to be recognized as a genuine university discipline, labored under sustained student demand for places and endured minimal government funding. Yet CAEs developed into assemblies of professionals and educators who created vocational courses which catered for the needs of those whom universities had shunned: mature age and part time students. Their lasting legacy includes: strong professional links; a deeper appreciation of learning and teaching; connections with mature students; an emphasis on the scholarship of teaching; and a continuance of the discussion about accounting as an academic or vocational discipline.