Accounting Education

and COVID-19
Aria Farah Mita
During the epidemic,
pay cuts and layoffs
• Which companies are still
recruiting accountants?
• Do I meet their requirements?
Challenges
• Market demand for Accounting positions has increased slightly.
• Those Job are more demanding? YES!
• No Training
• No restriction on hours
• Work remotely
What I can do to qualify for Accounting jobs
after the pandemic?
• Set the right attitude
• Your knowledge” can lead you through the door, but “your passion” can
decide how far you can go
• Strive for proficiency → skilled
• a variety of online and offline resources to learn and apply your skills into
practice to achieve proficiency
• IQ and EQ
• emotional intelligence in the work places comes down to “understanding,
expressing and managing, good relationships and solving problems under
pressure
Other challenges

CPD REQUIREMENTS TECHNOLOGY & GOVERNMENT STIMULUS

SECURITY
Issues in Financial Reporting – during
Pandemic
• Going concern
• Fair value measurement and impairment
• Loan restructuring / modification
• Lease accounting and
• Hedge accounting
Issues in Audit – during Pandemic
• audit evidence,
• auditing accounting estimates,
• auditor reporting and
• subsequent events
 Tips for Accountants When Working
Remotely

Establish Pursue Achieve Understand Build

Establish Boundaries for Pursue a Degree or Achieve productivity by Understand the Build Your Digital
Work-Life Balance Certification also listening to Technology Available Infrastructure
webinars, reading online
journals, and catching up
on the latest news about
hiring and accounting
Accounting Profession & New Normal after
Covid-19 (Papadopoulou, 2020)
• COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected the activity of accounting
professionals
• We are forced into changes in their work routine
• We are experiencing difficulty in adapting to the newly emerging
work demands
Teaching Accounting – during
pandemic
• Whether the Learnings
objectives are achieved
• The Assessment is adjusted
• Teaching Method
• Teaching Materials
• Communication with the
students
• Practical insight – Internship or
Lab
• Platform
Structural problems of
an online-only world
• Internet access issues, including affordability .
• Broadband bandwidth overload issues, particularly when there are
multiple homeworkers and students at home .
• Power supply instability .
• Students with no suitable equipment .
• Students, and staff, whose online class experience was hindered by
lack of a quiet space of access to computers, because the family was all
together .
• Shortage of suitable IT for learning or teaching .
• Personal, particularly faculty, preference for face-to-face interactions,
and inertia towards moving to alternatives (reflected in several
references to relief felt or expected by faculty when they return to
face-to-face delivery) .
• Learning resource access issues, for example, to libraries and specialist
software .
• Loss of student support within the university systems.
• Source: Sangster et al. (2020)
 Stress-inducing factors experienced by faculty and
students (1)
• Absence of training for faculty in online technology
• Bureaucracy
• Changes of assessment constrained/delayed by
accreditation concerns
• Faculty facing an enormous increase in marking because
of a switch from MCQ + computation assessment to 5–10
page individual research projects (1000 student cohort)
• Faculty feeling isolated (no student body
language/feedback in synchronous classes)
• Faculty had to learn new skills quickly
• Faculty prefer face-to-face
• Faculty with no computers
• Faculty working strange hours because they were with
their families/caring/home schooling
Source: Sangster et al. (2020)
• Faculty workload significantly increased
• Loss of self-efficacy
• Lost revenue streams (resulting risks)
• Physical health of faculty decreased due
to excessive time spent on a computer
every day
• Potential workload issues in the future of
getting students up to the level they
should be at after F2F returns
• Proctoring/Invigilation concerns
• Research time down
• Steep learning curve for faculty
• Students less engaged
• Students missing university community
 Stress-inducing factors experienced by faculty
and students (2)
• All teaching cancelled because of a shortage of resources to shift • Personal economic issues
to online • Poor public health care system delaying return to normality
• Assessment changed to match online situation • Power cuts

• Broadband overload issues • Problems in giving extra time in online exams for students with special
needs
• Coursework assessments postponed, replaced, or weightings • Shortage of suitable IT for teaching
across assessment shifted towards final exam • Student performance in exams down
• Exams cancelled by external professional accountancy • Student workload increased
organisation that would have been used as the final assessment
• Students could not attend online classes because the family was all
of the students together
• Exams replaced by research projects • Students muted their audio
• Faculty reduced interaction with students after suffering anxiety • Students not connecting their cameras
issues and a sense of ‘who am I teaching?’ when hearing other • Students quiet online
people talking on a student’s mic
• Students struggled to cope in the switch to online
• Increased training needed for students in online -v- face-to-face • Students want face-to-face
• Internet access issues • Students with no computers

• Loss of the university as a community • Syllabus adapted

• Online attendance lower than face-to-face

Source: Sangster et al. (2020)
Source: Sangster et al. (2020)
Quality of the online-only provision and its
consequences for the future
• It is impossible to deliver high quality materials, assessments,
support, and marking when faculty are working beyond manageable
levels in an alien environment to which they are not accustomed
• The long-term objective after COVID-19 is to ensure accounting
education sustainability is not affected in the quality and delivery of
objectives
Thank you