Accounting: A Gateway to a World of Opportunity

Video Icon Video
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Beyond having proficiency with numbers, future accountants must be equipped to collaborate, communicate, and contribute across business functions.
Featuring Joyce Strawser, Seton Hall University
  • Accounting offers a dynamic entry point into the business world, preparing students with both technical acumen and broad interdisciplinary exposure.
  • Business educators will need to intentionally develop communication, relationship-building, and other critical skills in their curricula to prepare accounting professionals for future success.
  • Industry partnerships, including collaborations with employers and CPA firms, can enhance student readiness through experiential learning, mentorship, and career-path visibility.

Transcript

Joyce Strawser: [00:11] Accounting is really a gateway profession. Students think of accounting as an area where you become very siloed. You've got high technical expertise, you're very niche, then.

[00:23] But as a professional, you are out there building relationships, or even if you're an accountant internally, you are working with others to provide data that they need for decision-making.

[00:35] It really is about relationships and developing the skills to communicate with others. An understanding of the basic operation of a business exposes you to every area of business.

[00:49] So accountants can go very easily from being someone who's focused on financial reporting to somebody who's focused on marketing analytics, to somebody who's focused more on event management, or you know, an entertainment company. You see that all the time.

An understanding of the basic operation of a business exposes you to every area of business.

[01:07] Accountants move out of their first jobs into areas with a lot of responsibility, but can take them in completely different directions. And that's what the profession can do for you.

[01:22] Once you have that certification, you have a lot of opportunities that you can either engage in over a longer period or make as flexible, small, or large as you like.

[01:36] Accounting is an opportunity to build very important, very critical success skills like communication, persuasion, the ability to listen, and to take what somebody says and then deploy that in a way that helps them.

[01:54] I think accounting could do more to prepare students for the skills that they're going to need to develop and sustain human relationships. We try to, I think, make sure our students have great communication skills.

There needs to be a much greater emphasis on the training of students in communication across all dimensions.

[02:09] But you have to do more; it has to be more about giving feedback in a positive and nonthreatening way. How do you listen in a way that's meaningful so that you can absorb the feedback that others are giving you?

[02:24] How can you have those conversations that no one wants to have? Challenging conversations about things that aren't going well and how you can fix them?

[02:32] There needs to be a much greater emphasis on the training of students in communication across all dimensions. So, what do we do about that?

[02:42] I think a lot of it will be partnering with our employers, partnering with corporations, partnering with CPA firms, and using them as partners to help students see the value of the profession.

[An accounting education] really opens a lot of doors that a lot of other fields do not.

[02:56] Help them appreciate what investing in an accounting education and a start in an accounting career can do for them. It really opens a lot of doors that a lot of other fields do not.

[03:09] I know that at my school, we're working a lot with our alumni to create scholarships specifically designated for students who want to pursue a graduate degree in accounting, or to help with programs that are essentially apprenticeships. That's something we're doing at my school.

[03:26] We have an apprenticeship with a company that would allow students to start working, and they would earn credit for their work, combined with the acquisition of some accounting knowledge and skills.

[03:40] This could be something that would help them see that there's a world of opportunities out there as an accountant. And so it's something that I want to invest some time and some of my educational experience in that direction.

What did you think of this content?
Your feedback helps us create better content
Thank you for your input!
(Optional) If you have the time, our team would like to hear your thoughts
The views expressed by contributors to AACSB Insights do not represent an official position of AACSB, unless clearly stated.
Subscribe to LINK, AACSB's weekly newsletter!
AACSB LINK—Leading Insights, News, and Knowledge—is an email newsletter that brings members and subscribers the newest, most relevant information in global business education.
Sign up for AACSB's LINK email newsletter.
Our members and subscribers receive Leading Insights, News, and Knowledge in global business education.
Thank you for subscribing to AACSB LINK! We look forward to keeping you up to date on global business education.
Weekly, no spam ever, unsubscribe when you want.