Assessment of students’ attitudes towards the Accounting profession: the case of University of Botswana

Abstract

This study examines the attitudes of students towards the accounting profession and whether those attitudes differ because of gender. The Accounting Attitude Scale (AAS) developed in the United States was used to assess the attitudes of first year and fourth year accounting students by employing analysis of descriptive statistics. The findings suggest that the overall attitude of fourth year students was less favourable than that of the first year students but remained relatively positive in both cohorts. While the attitude score for male students was fairly the same, a noteworthy difference was found between the attitude level of first year and fourth year female students with the former having a more positive attitude than the latter. The implications of these findings are that accounting educators and other stakeholders of accounting education need to identify the means of maintaining the esteem of completing students towards accounting at high level. Things like more focused accounting internship programme, effective career counselling and motivational speeches by visiting prominent accountants from industry and public practice may go a long way in maintaining the initial positive attitudes at entry into accounting programmes. The future studies should focus on unearthing the factors causing the decline in attitudes towards accounting and how the trend can be reversed.