Accounting Education in Australia and Japan: A Comparative Examination

In recent years there has been a great concern among governments, professional bodies and educators for changes in accounting education. It seems useful for planners of such changes to consider the methods of training accountants in different countries as one country can learn from the experiences of another. In the existing literature, however, there is a dearth of comparative studies on this area of education in different countries. This paper presents an analysis of accounting education in Australia and Japan highlighting the major differences in the two countries. The analysis reveals that accounting education in Australia places emphasis on financial accounting while the emphasis is on cost and management accounting in Japan. It also shows that being firm-specific through comprehensive in-house training the Japanese system is in a better position to produce accountants capable of adapting accounting systems to the different work situations which result from technological changes and automation.