The first issue: how well are doctors in Accountancy trained in Europe?
I wrote about this is in the EAA Newsletter in 2013. In my note I argued that the EAA should play an active role in the design of Doctoral training in Accountancy in Europe. I helped the EAA by designing an ideal Accountancy doctoral program for them.
You can read the note here: http://www.eaa-online.org/userfiles/file/EAA-Newsletter-Nr41-2013.pdf
You have to scroll down to my note on page 4.
To come back to my design I would now do it a bit differently. My design uses the European post-Bologna university programs set up: a 3 year Bachelor program, 1 or 2 year Master program, and a Doctoral phase.
I was not aware of this when I wrote my note, but Europe uses a framework for coding educational attainment in the EU member states: the UNESCO created International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED).
In that framework Bachelor degrees are the ISCED6 level degrees; Master degrees: ISCED7, and doctoral degrees: ISCED8.
So the question is: what would a program leading up to a ISCED level 8 degree in Accountancy in Europe look like?
The ISCED setup will be convenient in later posts and in the discussion that will hopefully ensue. ‘Bologna’ for non-European readers refers to the Pan-European, also outside of the EU, restructuring in the early 2000’s of university programs into a Bachelor and a Master phase.