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Abstract
The purposes of this research are (1) to describe how millennials view accounting knowledge and the accounting profession and (2) to investigate whether their view of accounting knowledge affects the accounting profession. A survey was conducted online and obtained responses from 342 undergraduate and postgraduate accounting students across Indonesia. The data were analysed using descriptive analysis and multiple linear path analysis. The results showed that a paradigm shift has already happened among millennials. Financial and managerial accounting are not essential nowadays, while auditing, taxation, information systems, general economics, and business knowledge are deemed to be more important. Although millennials still view the accounting profession positively, the results also indicated that the accounting profession needs to adjust to millennials' demands. This research implies that the millennials currently view the accounting profession not just based on how it implements the traditional core courses of basic accounting science but also on how it implements more practical aspects of accounting science and its integration with business and management. This research provides early evidence of the adjustments that accounting educators and professionals need to make if they want to maintain the high value of accounting knowledge and the profession in the current situation.
Keywords: Indonesia, accounting education, millennials, accounting knowledge, accounting profession.
Introduction
The accounting profession and its practices are changing rapidly over time. Various studies on accounting history have stated that accounting is a product of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century (Gutierrez, et al., 2005; Daniels, et al., 2010). Many users perceive accounting as a business practice rather than a science (Baldvinsdottir, et al., 2010; Hartmann, 2017). The primary accounting practice evolved from recording transactions to form bookkeeping. The bookkeeping process provides feedback for internal as well as external users. Traditionally, the bookkeeping mechanism created branches of accounting science called financial accounting and managerial accounting (Edwards & Boyns, 2012; Carnegie, 2014). Financial accounting focused more on financial statements and reporting, with the financial accounting standards as their basis. Managerial accounting concentrated more on financial performance indicators for companies' decision making. In the 20th century, a new approach to accounting emerged. Financial statement fraud and problems created the need for a new branch of accounting science, called auditing (Maeve, 2015; Hay & Cordery, 2018). The evolution...