Requirement of Soft Skills among Graduating Accounting Students
A study conducted by Muda et al. (2009) on employers’ reaction to the quality of accounting graduates produced by Universiti Technologi Mara (UiTM) shows that there is a gap between employers’ perception on the determinants of quality of the graduates and the University’s curriculum apparatus for ensuring quality of the graduates. The study suggests that it is important to ensure that accounting graduates are armed with correct information and skills to facilitate them in securing relevant employment. Educators and university administrators play important roles in ensuring that accounting graduates obtain the necessary skills and knowledge for them to be marketable in the industry and in the public sector. Academic accountants have to improve on their quality of teaching through scholarly researches that would create new and relevant knowledge needed by the students for them to be well groomed to face modern challenges in the larger society. An exciting finding from the referred research is that the most important quality that accounting students need to take to the labour market is sense of responsibility (Muda et al., 2009). Again, De Zoort et al. (1997) found that accounting educators are not doing enough to provide adequate information/knowledge to accounting students. They recommended that accounting educators may help students by providing them with adequate technical foundation to work in public accounting firm with additional emphasis on inside and outside the classroom real training on the working environment in public accounting firm. This would make the students to be able to visualize the real working environment outside, while still in the University.