Accy 301: What we need.

In reply to your correspondent "a concerned accountancy student" (Salient No 17, July 16) I would like to defend the right of the Accy 301 lecturer concerned to put forward the views he did.

Firstly, I did not see the situation in the lecture as the author painted it. The lecturer finished the course half-way through the final lecture and then made brief comments on the final exam. He then began his "tirade of eloquence" after making it clear that the following comments were to make us think and were not part of the course or examinable. Some students who voiced objection were told they were free to leave.

The book mailed out to students with the final project was certainly of an appropriate size and shape to fit in most student's rubbish tins.

Secondly, the author seems to think that the teaching of knowledge can be neutral and free from value attachments. Knowledge however cannot be neutral and must reflect values and assumptions of the user of that knowledge. All the lecturer was doing in this case was changing the values and assumptions underlying the knowledge and challenging us to consider these alternative ways of looking at the subject and life in general.

He first asked us to consider alternatives to a capitalist system, such as a system operating with increased government ownership, planning and control. He commented that extreme capitalism and its socialistic alternatives seemed not to have solved the economic, social and political problems of their time and suggested that a consideration of a system that was not centred on man and materialistic motives may provide some insight.

He then talked at some length about numerical patterns found in the Bible which tend to suggest that it is a book of special significance that may lead one to a knowledge of God on which one could desirably centre one's personal life and, ideally, community life.

I admit this may sound like "religious mania" to many but I suggest that the author's strong desire to keep religion out of lectures is simply a mania in the other direction.

In short by changing the assumptions, and frame of reference the lecturer presented a minority viewpoint but he also only took a small portion of the time I have spent on lectures at this University.

What has all this to do with accounting, which is neither religious studies nor political science?

Accounting may seem a neutral reporting of economic facts but in fact it reflects the ideology and values of the system in which it operates. It tells the users (or should, as best it can) economic information which they use in decision making.

Our present accounting framework grew out of demands made by commercial enterprise during the industrial revolution. Hence, modern accounting [unclear: inour] country reflects the capitalist assumptions of the profit motive, free enterprise, right to private property and competition.

While different assumptions underlie the system accounting adapts to reflect these. This is seen in the different performance measures adopted by accounting in Socialist countries and in government accounting.

The BCA degree course does very little questioning of the basis of our system and hence of the bias of accountancy.

If such questioning cannot be carried out in a University, where else can it be done? It is unfortunate if our business graduates blindly accept the business system as it operates without bothering to ask if its results are just or fair or simply whether it is the best of a number of alternatives. Perhaps part of the fault lies with the job oriented approach of the degree.

There is also, given our economic system, little attempt to discuss ethical issues that arise within that system. I cannot help feeling many managers and students reluctantly accept a modified profit concept and would prefer the old idea of profit maximisation.

I therefore support this lecturer's right to make the statements he did and raise by implication the sort of questions outlined above