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At leading corporations and firms not a day passes without a debate on what the future of business will look like. How will technology impact our roles, our businesses and our future? Conversations then shift to how we will prepare our people and what investments need to be made today and going forward. But what about the annual incoming crop of college graduates? How will the skills they need to bring to their work change in the coming five years?

That is the burning question challenging university faculty every time they consider how to allot valuable course time. “We are constantly weighing what we have to get through in the core curriculum requirements against finding class time to spend on projects and cases that will translate well for students in their future professions,” says Bradley Bennett, an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a KPMG James Marwick Professor-in-Residence.

“With newer technologies being introduced, there seems to be a shift in what skills firms are needing their new hires to have coming in the door. We in academia are considering these needs and are trying to determine how this impacts our classes in terms of the class format and material covered”, he said. “In general, we have been comfortable with updating specific course content, like when standards are updated and need to be added to curriculums, but a complete restructuring of the teaching process and topics is a bit intimidating.”

Eldar Maksymov, Assistant Professor of Accounting at the Arizona State University W.P. Carey School of Business, and also a KPMG Marwick Professor-in-Residence, concluded during his time with KPMG’s Audit practice that curriculums need to allocate more time on the real-life scenarios that require critical thinking capabilities.

“It’s clear the firms are going to be using advanced visualization tools more regularly. Although students will be able to learn how to use these technologies very quickly, identifying optimal situations to utilize these tools and making appropriate conclusions from the output of these tools is a lot more challenging and requires a different mindset than mirroring tasks,” said Maksymov.

Along with industry disruption and new models of teaching and learning comes plenty of opportunities for increased collaboration between the universities, their faculty and the hiring firms. Eldar suggests increasing the number of roundtables between classroom faculty and firm representatives to discuss and evaluate the skills required (and desired) of incoming new hires.

“With all the change in the profession, now seems like an ideal time for firms to designate a service role professional dedicated to helping to bridge the gap between academia and practice,” he said. “When it comes to creating challenging course case studies and assignments, faculty often lack current practical experience. Firm representatives are best positioned to offer valuable input on current real-life challenging scenarios.”

“Critical thinking and presentation skills are two wish list items we hear often from hiring managers,” Bradley says. “Why not sponsor more case competitions on campuses? We need judges, we need timely topics and we need mentors for our students. If these are successfully carried out over time, corporations will see their time well-spent in the form of new hires who are confident when thinking critically and board-room ready.”

After only three months in the KPMG Professor in Residence program, observing, researching and interviewing with audit executives, both Bradley and Eldar identified important updates to their classroom practices that they believe will be very valuable to their students.

In order to help his students develop critical thinking abilities, Eldar has incorporated several mini cases into his course syllabus. These cases highlight the importance of understanding clients’ businesses and accounting practices and require students to make judgments in unstructured situations.

Similarly, Bradley has added more real-life scenarios to course curriculums so that students are leaving class with a higher confidence level when called upon to think critically. He’s also considering how to maximize technology to make class time as effective as possible.

During his professorship at KPMG, Bradley heard Tableau discussed often. He admitted that although he lives in Excel, it is time to consider the capabilities of new tools. “I’m going to dabble in Tableau on my next semester break. Once I know its potential, I can evaluate the ways students can begin introducing the tool into their assignments,” he said.

That sums up some initial thoughts from our KPMG James Marwick Professors-in-Residence on how universities, corporations and firms can think innovatively about how they can increase their collaboration efforts to better position students for what lies ahead.

I’m excited that our new residence program is a positive step in this direction. We are working with professors to better understand innovation in audit and how university accounting curriculums may need to change to keep pace with the rapidly evolving profession.

What other ideas do you have on how these groups can work together to prepare students for what lies ahead?

Shaun Budnik, Audit Innovation Leader, KPMG LLP

#innovateaudit

This article represents the views of the author only, and the information contained herein is of a general nature and is not intended to address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. No one should act on such information without appropriate professional advise after a thorough examination of the particular situation.