Student Guide Corner

Joe: I am delighted today to be talking with Dennis Beresford, one of the most influential accountants in the history of the profession. Just as importantly from the perspective of this blog, he has also spent quite a number of years as a teacher. Denny, I recently read one student review of your class that said: "Excellent in stimulating student's interest in accounting matters. Very intelligent and dynamic. Good class to take for improving research, critical thinking, and communication skills." You have certainly had a wonderfully wide and varied career. Can you furnish us with a short biography of some of your many accomplishments over the years? Denny:    The short biography is 26 years in public accounting with what is now Ernst & Young, 10 � years as Chairman of the FASB, and 16 years as E&Y Executive Professor of Accounting at the University of Georgia. I began as a staff auditor in the Los Angeles office of E&Y and worked there for about 10 years. I...

I am a big believer that one of the problems with an accounting education is that it is made up of way too much accounting. If our sole job as college educators is to get our students ready for the first five years after graduation, then the amount of accounting we cover is probably about right. However, an awful lot of accounting graduates leave the accounting profession within the first few years after finishing college. At what point do all those accounting courses become a waste of time if a person is not still doing accounting within a few years? But, I could argue exactly the same thing about the study of History, English, Philosophy, or the like. My belief has long been (well, for 43 years now) that a college education has to help each person have a well-lived and fulfilled life. If a college education is not still having a positive impact on a person decades and decades after graduation, I wonder whether it wasn�t a failure. I believe that we too often abdicate ...