The CPA Exam is Changing: Are the Professors Ready?

Abstract

Accounting professors will now be accountable for teaching their students to think critically, analyze, and evaluate information. The pressure to change accounting higher education cannot be ignored with the new version of the CPA exam, released in April 2017, which now tests analysis and evaluation skills. Have the professors made the changes in their classrooms that will help their students to be successful with this format of questioning? This research seeks to find whether professors have indeed embraced pedagogy that will enhance students’ ability to develop higher order thinking skills. The study begins by explaining changes to the CPA exam. The study provides literature review of the accounting education process, traditional methods of teaching accounting, suggested methods of teaching accounting for enhancement of critical thinking, and identified reasons for resistance to changing teaching methods. The survey is designed to identify current teaching methods in accounting classrooms. The survey seeks to discover what methods are being used to develop higher order thinking skills. The results show that lecture and demonstration of problems are still the predominant method of instruction in accounting classrooms, and these methods are not typically endorsed by research in terms of developing critical thinking, analysis and evaluation skills.