The Teaching of Ethics in Undergraduate Accounting Programmes: The Students' Perspective

Abstract

This paper solicits the views of students in order to assess the goals and effectiveness of the teaching of ethics in undergraduate Accounting programmes. Using a survey and interviews, the opinions of second-year undergraduate students at a UK university were obtained. Their perception of the aims and importance of ethics and their preferred means of teaching delivery are established. The results appear to show that students regard ethics teaching as being important to them and that a stand-alone ethics course is preferred to integrated teaching across the curriculum. In particular, students describe the benefits of a compartmentalised approach to their learning with ethics ‘all in one place’. Possible reasons for students' choices are given and discussed and, from the level of importance attributed to ethics learning, it is concluded that ethics should be treated as part of a wider employability agenda for students, to help them in their future careers.