What would I change about how accounting and finance are taught? I would bring Excel directly into more accounting and finance assignments. To be clear, I still think traditional assessments have a place, especially in final exams. Students should be able to understand journal entries, financial statements, debits and credits, variance analysis, valuation, and decision-making without relying entirely on a tool. But there should be a stronger shift in assignments toward how the work actually happens. In the workplace, accounting and finance professionals are not writing everything out by hand or filling out scantrons. They are working in Excel, ERP systems, Power BI, dashboards, and financial models. They are cleaning data, building schedules, finding errors, supporting decisions, and explaining what the numbers mean. So why not build more of that into the learning process? This would not make courses easier. If anything, it introduces a new challenge: how do we validate that students are actually learning and not just using AI or templates to get to the answer? That is where assessment design matters. A strong assignment should not only ask for the final number. It should ask students to show their logic, explain their assumptions, defend their approach, and connect the analysis back to the business impact. These are the new and exciting challenges to address in accounting & finance education.
Muhammad Jamal
2mo
Colleges are more focused on software learning that are part of Accounting/Finance. You might not get the full wotkplace demo, however, you still get to learn Excel (Intermediate), Word, Access, Powerpoint, Quickbooks/Turbox. Learn how to actually file Basic Personal/corporate tax and volunteer at Tax clinics ( i do believe same for Uni students). Sorry for the long comment lol
Couldn't agree more, it's unfortunate how we barely apply our theoretical learnings during school. Huge opportunity for a curriculum shift💯
I resonate with your thoughts here and bringing tools like Microsoft Excel and Power BI into learning is long overdue. But I think we also need to expand what we teach. Real world finance is heavily shaped by laws, taxes, and how money actually flows through a business. On top of that, relationships and communication are just as critical as technical skills. I agree that tools matter but context and people are what make the work actually impactful.