THE IMPACT OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION ON THE MORAL DEVELOPMENT OF ACCOUNTING STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Two decades of financial scandals have seriously damaged the credibility of accountants as guardians of financial information. To repair this credibility, the Malaysian government released a blueprint that mandated Malaysian educational institutions to produce morally competent professionals. This study assessed the progress of Malaysian universities in meeting this important mandate by evaluating the moral development of accounting students enrolled at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). The results of the survey revealed that there was so significant difference in the moral competencies of 2nd-year and final-year accounting students at IIUM. The implication of this result is that IIUM's current crop of final-year accounting students were not morally competent enough to deal with the inevitable moral dilemmas they would face in the work place.