A Research on the University Students' Viewpoints on Accounting Courses and Profession

ABSTRACT.The perverse competition from commercial life increases, gradually, the accountancy's importance in the expectations of the management. The management needs both programs and qualified staff; they must enter faster and more reliable data into the system and must be able to interpret these data, too. Therefore, the accounting organization is based on computer technology, hardware and software, and on universities and vocational training that educate qualified employees. Thus, a study was made regarding the adequacy of the vocational education and using the questionnaire as a tool. The questionnaire was applied on the students who are trained in the educational programs of Accounting and Taxing Applications and Business Management of the Vocational High School (VHS). The questionnaire deals with education and expectations of the students who are related to accountancy and shop classes. The data had been interpreted with SPSS statistical program.JEL codes: M400; M410; A220Keywords: vocational/occupational education; accountancy, Vocational High Schools (VHS)1. IntroductionInformation and speed, in the globalized world, where commercial boundaries are removed and the value of the processed information gradually increases, have been important elements for management to provide a competitive advantage. Management needs to keep up with this increasing volume of trade both physically (facility, machine, technology, etc.) and in terms of infrastructure information. Information means that the human being understands and systemizes the events around and inside him and brings it explainable. In order to get this, observation, experiment, and experiences need to be collected (Bilhan, 1991: 143). Concerning the education of accountancy, this is a process providing for systemizing this information.While Aysan defines accounting education as a process of determining, collecting, measuring, processing, checking the truth and abstracting the reports of information that is useful to managerial decisions and in informing students about how the reported information will be used in the phases of deciding and developing the student's skills for application of these information (Aysan, 1979: 254), Akbulut expresses that the main reason of accounting education is to educate the responsible ones who need to use financial information as true and reliable accounting information which has to be presented and to direct the applications according to it (Akbulut, 1997: 3). At this stage, to be able to present true and reliable accounting information, namely, to produce financial information, the data to be entered need to be true and also detailed to take different reports into many subjects, but at least speed and faultless. At this point, accounting pocket programs and qualified vocational staff go to help management. These two elements completing each other come together by a good accounting organization. Additionally, accounting software can be bought by necessary paid price, and software can be updated to the necessities of this time. Nevertheless, this program, in the absence of qualified vocational staffs, will not work effectively.In an atmosphere that the need for accounting staffs to be able to provide for financial information related to a just, true, objective management, and good quality increases day by day, the development of the vocational information and skills of the accounting students come into prominence. Undoubtedly, the quality of the accounting education that students receive is the basic determinative factor at this point. Under the framework, good-quality education, good-quality accountant, and good-quality accounting information bring effective and true managerial decisions (Dastan, 2008). Therefore, the importance of the both Faculties of Economics and Administrative Sciences which educate staff as managers toward accountancy, and VHS's that train intermediate staffs toward accounting organization increases still more. …