News
Industry leaders address the missing
link in local accounting graduates at
ACCA conference
Qualities of world-class
professional accountants and
role of educators discussed
KUALA LUMPUR | About 120
members of the academia from public
and private universities attended the
Learning Conference organised by
ACCA (the Association of Chartered
Certified Accountants) on 30 October
2014, which addressed the mismatch
of local accounting graduates with
employer and industry expectations.
Speaking at the conference was
Dato’ Prof Dr Asma Binti Ismail,
Director General of Higher Education
in the Ministry of Education.
“Our universities are producing
accounting graduates by the hundreds
every year, and yet we continue to
hear remarks from the employers that
there are not enough graduates in the
market. This is a paradox, and not a
new one. It is not a question of ‘not
enough’ but rather of whether the
industry feels our graduates are good
enough to hire,” said Dato’ Prof Dr
Asma.
This, according to Dato’ Prof Dr
Asma, leads to the question of whether
L - R : Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed, chairman of the Public Accounts
Committee (PAC); Dato’ Abdul Rauf Rashid, Country Managing Partner
of EY; Dr Lau Chee Kwong, Associate Professor of Accounting at
Nottingham University Business School; and Robert Lim, Head of HR
Strategy at CIMB. Photo courtesy ACCA.
graduates are being taught correctly.
She implored members of the
academia to work together with
industry professionals to better
the accounting graduates through
pragmatic
approaches,
saying,
“Universities should no longer be
designing our curriculum in silo but
together with members of the industry.
The relationship between academia
and industry must be intensified if this
is going to work.
November 2014
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