Perception of Undergraduate Accounting Students towards Professional Accounting Career in Nigeria

Abstract

The shortage of professional accountants has been attributed to the perception accounting students hold about their intended professional careers and this affects their self-image, attitude towards the career and their confidence in the profession. Therefore, this paper critically appraises the perception of undergraduate accounting students towards professional accounting career in Nigeria. One hundred and fifty (150) accounting students from three universities in Nigeria participated in this study and data were elicited from the respondents with the aid of well-structured questionnaires. Descriptive Statistics and Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient were used for data analysis.
Findings showed that students are motivated to pursue professional accounting career by combination of prestige, extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Furthermore, results indicated that grit personality, prestige, extrinsic and intrinsic factors exhibited strong and positive correlation with student’s intention to pursue accounting career. However, social and reference factors displayed positive but weak correlation. Additionally, students perceive professional examinations to be very tough, expensive, time-consuming and frightening. Thus, they refrain from writing professional examinations and that could be detrimental to the future of professional accounting career in Nigeria. Therefore, this research suggests that educational institutions, accounting professional bodies and career counselors play their roles to inspire, support and motivate accounting students to work towards professionalism.