Who Are Our Students?
By Belverd E. Needles, Jr., Ph.D., CPA
Editor
Whenever I am with teachers of beginning accounting, I hear complaints about the new generation of students. They won’t read the chapters. They won’t do the homework. They won’t come to class. And on and on. One professor told me, “I’m so glad I’m going to retire next year so I don’t have to deal with these students any more.” These comments were so common that a year or so ago I decided to examine the issue of “Who are our students?” This Trends piece and the next three that follow will report on what I found; why this generation is as good, only different, from past generations; and how I think we can engage these students.
First, there are many beginning accounting students and there will be more. Don’t expect small classes. Between 1998 and 2008 the number of high school graduates in the US will increase by almost 30 percent. As a result, accounting classes will increase by at least 30 percent because business (along with health-related fields) is the most popular major. One in six students will choose business as their major. Most of them will take accounting in their first or second year.
Second, our students come from increasingly diverse cultures. One of my recent classes has names from Akbari to Ecobedo to Morrissey to Rusmeehatthakam to Svancarek to Xu. And these are the easy names to pronounce! Across the United States, the freshman class of 2005 was 30 percent minority and the proportion of minorities will continue to grow. Further, when we include immigrants of Caucasian background, such as students from Eastern Europe, the percentage grows to more than 50 percent. It’s still true, as I have heard my entire career, that many students are the first-generation to go to college. Thirty-seven percent of those who took the SAT in 2004 were in this category.
Third, students are not as smart as they were in 1967, but they are smarter than they were in 1981 or 1991. Average SAT scores fell from a high of 1060 in 1967 through the 1970s to a low of about 990 in 1981, reflecting the expansion in community colleges and open enrollments. However, after 1981, with some ups and downs, the average score has made it back to about 1025 in 2005. Thus, the issue with our students is not that they are not smart. The issue, if there is one, lies elsewhere.
Fourth, students use oral and visual skills more so than reading skills to gain information and knowledge. The gain in the SAT scores cited above comes mostly from gains in math skills scores. This is good for accounting analysis, but the scores is writing and reading, which are also critical to success in accounting, are almost level with ten years ago. Participation by high school students in English composition courses dropped significantly in the last ten years from 81 percent to 67 percent. A recent survey of high schools that asked them what selected activities they engaged in the day before found the following results: 90 percent watched TV; 52 percent listened to the radio; 50 percent played a video game; almost 40 percent used the Internet; but only 10 percent read a newspaper-- the only reading activity cited. The fact that Apple sold more than a billion dollars worth of iPods during each quarter in 2005 reflects this trend. In spite of the National Writing Commission’s effort to focus attention on the importance of writing as “critical part of students’ experience” from elementary school through college, teachers in the classroom face a difficult challenge. With iPods, vPods, cell phones, text messaging, Internet, Googleing, videos games, and digital phones, we will not return to the “good old days,” if they ever existed.
Fifth, life is complex for our students, even the best ones. A survey of 282,500 freshman students at 437 4-year colleges, shown in the accompanying table, gives a good idea of the challenges they face in managing their time. In a typical week, the average student spends more time working and almost as much time commuting as she does in class. The average student spends only four hours a week studying, one hour reading, and half an hour talking to teachers. Forty percent of students study less than two hours per week. Only 40 percent study 6 hours or more.
I suggest the five areas above are important sources of the dissatisfaction many faculty feel toward their teaching situation. Embedded in these areas are changes in society that are irreversible, and, as the professoriate ages, the gap in experience between the average teacher and the average student expands. The question facing us now is how to address this gap in a way that improves the accounting learning experience for both students and teachers. In future Trends articles, I will address some ways that will help us understand what motivates students today, how we can meet students on their own ground, and how we can improve the accounting learning process.
Sleeping 50
Eating 21
Working 20
Class 15
Commuting 12
Socializing 8
TV 6
Partying 5
Sports 4
Studying 4
Childcare 2
Video Games 2
Student Groups 1.5
Reading 1
Talking to Teachers 0.5
Unaccounted for 16.0
Total 168.0
282,500 freshman students at 437 4-year schools
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education. Vol. LI, No.1, August 27, 2004.