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.