Conversations From the IFRS Round Table

The SEC’s proposal to require U.S. public companies to file financial reports using IFRS is being felt on college campuses. Student interest in international standards is growing. Professors are grappling with resource and training issues. While incorporating IFRS into the accounting curriculum can be daunting, some professors say it will reinvigorate academics and allow them to focus students on the underlying economic condition of a business.

To get a sense of the effect IFRS is having at colleges and universities, the JofA hosted a virtual round table, gathering eight accounting professors from around the country by conference call (for a detailed list of panelists, see below). The conversation took place Sept. 29, about a month after the SEC voted to expose a proposed road map that could require large U.S. public companies to use IFRS beginning in 2014 and all issuers to convert by 2016.

Here we present audio clips from the round-table discussion, which is detailed in the December issue of the JofA:

Segment 1: The Impact on Textbooks

Speakers

Loren A. Nikolai

Gary Sundem

Mary E. Barth

Belverd “Bel” Needles Jr.

Segment 2: What About U.S. GAAP for Private Companies?

Speakers

Loren A. Nikolai

Mary E. Barth

Wayne R. Landsman

Segment 3: The Professor Pipeline

Speakers

Mary E. Barth

Frank K. Ross

The following panelists are featured in the audio clips (for a list of all panel participants, please see the December article):

Mary E. Barth, CPA, Ph.D., MBA, is the Joan E. Horngren professor of accounting and senior associate dean for academic affairs at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. She has been a member of the IASB since 2001.

Wayne R. Landsman, Ph.D., MBA, is the KPMG professor of accounting and the associate dean of the Ph.D. program at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a former FASAC member.

Belverd “Bel” Needles Jr., CPA, Ph.D., MBA, is Ernst & Young Distinguished Professor of Accounting in the School of Accountancy and Management Information Systems at DePaul University. He is past president of the International Association for Accounting Education and Research and of the Federation of Schools of Accounting. He is vice president–elect, education, for the American Accounting Association.

Loren A. Nikolai, CPA, Ph.D., MBA, is the Ernst & Young Distinguished Professor at the Robert J. Trulaske Sr. College of Business at the University of Missouri. He has written several textbooks including Intermediate Accounting. He is past director of education for the AAA and past president of the Federation of Schools of Accountancy.

Frank K. Ross, CPA, is a visiting professor of accounting at Howard University’s School of Business and is director of the school’s Center for Accounting Education. Ross held several positions at KPMG LLP, where he retired as mid-Atlantic area managing partner.

Gary Sundem, Ph.D., MBA, is professor emeritus of accounting at the University of Washington. He is co-author of such textbooks as Introduction to Financial Accounting and Introduction to Management Accounting.