One of my service areas at my university is actually co-chairing our General Education Committee. Crossed my mind, how many other institutions have an accounting course as part of general education. If so, what course? Should there be more? Maybe something accounting-ish, but more personal finance?
Finishing up reading Kaplan's "Cost and Effect". What has struck me most from reading is that the focus of an advanced costing system (most commonly an ABC system) is communication. Yet, so often in teaching advanced costing textbooks and we as instructors focus predominantly on the mechanics. Why?
Beyond this, if the true value of an advanced costing system is its ability to model and communicate the resource consumption of activities within the value chain, can we truly teach ABC/ABM without a deep dive into Value Chain Analysis?
The short answer to your question is no - especially in the manufacturing sector. The reality is that [in the world of modern profitability analytics] there is little difference between mature planning and costing. Forward looking ABC is now a reality, a key benefit of which is that ABC costs simply fall out of an integrated rolling forecast process. To accomplish this requires supply chain solutions that can extend causal modeling to the enterprise as a whole. And to do this, one really needs to understand operations. To me, this is the future of cost accountants, as much of what they do now will be automated.
Hope everyone is having a blessed holiday season and gearing up well for the spring term.
JP -
At my university, the Principles of Financial Accounting course is considered a gen ed, tied to our quantitative literacy requirement. We just added a Personal Finance Planning minor, which will soon add its foundation course as one of the quant lit choices as well. I can see in the future when the demand for the financial accounting course by non-majors will shift to the personal finance course.
Heather