PRIOR STUDIES
Pre-entry perception
Sale (2001) noted that most students chose accounting as a major before graduating from
high school or soon after entering college. Giladi, Amoo and Friedman (2001) concluded that
32% of respondents decided to major in accounting while still in high school; 28% during their
freshman college year; and 19% during their sophomore college year. Hunt, Anthony and Intrieri
(2004) found almost 50% of the accounting majors decided on their major before starting
college. Heiat, Brown and Johnson (2007) found that 40 % of students in their survey decided on
undertaking the accounting programme before they began their studies at the university and 30%
during their first year of study.
Despite these numbers, research reports point to the fact that secondary school students
base their accounting career decisions on a basket of negative and positive pre-conceived ideas
about the work of an accountant and accounting profession as a whole. In a study commissioned
by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Taylor (2000) concluded
that although high school students perceive accountants as “professional” and “intelligent”, they
are generally ignorant of what accountants do, have misinformation about the profession and
associate accountants with “maths” and “numbers”. Taylor reported that students perceived
accountants’ work as boring, tedious and monotonous that involve number-crunching. Byrne and
Willis (2005) noted that Irish secondary school students perceived the accounting profession as
boring, definite, precise and compliance driven. Although they consider it to be held in high
esteem by the society it still come lower in ranking than other professions such as doctors,
solicitors, dentist, architect, and scientists. Hartwell, Lightle and Maxwell (2005) in examining
the high school students’ perceptions of accounting observed that an unflattering perception of
accountants was one of the contributing factors to the decline of accounting majors.