Having One’s Cake and Eating It Too? Exploring the Balance between Research and Education Outcomes for U.S. Accounting Programs

• In Event: Research with an Impact on Scholarship and Practice

Abstract

One of higher education’s most enduring and perplexing questions is the nexus between research and teaching outcomes. The prevailing belief is that teaching and research are symbiotic activities, with each enhancing and informing the other. However, research conducted over several decades and across many disciplines has failed to empirically support this relationship. This paper revisits this question for the U.S. accounting discipline, arguing that resolution is now particularly important. To do this, we elevate the analysis of scholarship to the departmental level and displace teaching altogether, instead using CPA exam pass rates as an academic accounting department’s summative educational achievement. Examining 1985-2016 data for 69 top programs, we find that research productivity and desired educational outcomes are positively but not significantly selected. This suggests that a department’s two major objectives are neither in conflict with each other, nor supportive of each other. This result is mostly reproduced for different types of research productions and for shorter time periods. Some variation has occurred after the CPA exam assumed its current administrative protocol

Authors

• Alan Reinstein, Wayne State University

• Timothy J Fogarty, Case Western Reserve University

• Mary B Sasmaz, Case Western Reserve University