CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

I.I Background of the Study

Accounting education is a very interesting course and accountants are well placed in the society. However there is a lot of understanding of this study. It is very necessary for us to start this study by defining what accounting is:

Definition of Accounting

Accounting has been defined as the process of identifying, measuring and communicating economic information to permit informed judgement and decision by use of information. Accounting education as a profession has a background or history just like every other professional which prepare the zeal of individual group of individual to pursuit the profession. And most of the higher institution in Nigeria offer degree courses in accountancy and number of accounting books published in the profession increase.

All these contributed to the zeal of individual to embrace the professional that is a self employed after graduation.

Accounting Education

In accounting education before there was a few qualified teachers in secondary schools that teach accounting and these lead to poor output in the field of accounting education. The formulation of new policy on education (NPE) when the critical types of education was emphasized was technical colleges, commercial schools and colleges of technology, polytechnics and some comprehensive schools that interest in technical course as account.

But in the new national policy on education (1998) vocational subjects to which accounting bellows are designed cater for difference in talents to create opportunity and roles to students equip students to live effectively in our modern age of science and be self employed both in schools and in later life. The prospect of accounting course and more reasons why people do it is that an individual who did this course can find him/her self job in many firms and organization. There are so many areas wheel accounting education students can find jobs and they are equal employed prospect with every other department under faculty of management of science such as accountancy, public administration, business administration, marketing and barking and finance etc. but accounting education student have an edge over the student of the above mentioned because they are more exposed in all the subject.

The problem of accounting education are the emphasized and neglect of the course content of accounting education and lack of on recognize by the members of the public. It is a big problem that accounting education students suffers, because they are only seen as less intelligent people. Unemployment in the labour market today also contributed to the problem of employment prospect of accounting education student and inability of government to provide employment prospects for student after graduation.

The problem facing accounting education students is that society have a negative attitude towards the course some people seen as only the course involved teaching and no vacancy available for the students of accounting education and some accounting education student have directed their attention to other fields just because they think that there is no employment prospect after graduation. That is the reason that motivated me to study this topic, because we hope the findings will provide awareness for the students of accounting education. There are so many places where the employment prospects are available for the accounting education students.

Accounting education student have equal employment prospect with students of other department under faculty of management science. Accounting education students have chances to work as civil servant, private sector and ministry of finance or ministry of education and in all the financial institution in Enugu. They can also teach in primary, secondary and polytechnics.