Are the accounting curricula enough to equip the students to be the future accountants? An examination of the accounting modules of universities

Research Question: Are the accounting curricula enough to equip the students to be the future accountants? An examination of the accounting modules of universities.
Motivation: Big data and Artificial intelligence are playing a major role in overhauling of the accounting process and procedure. The role of the universities is to tune up the students for this role and prepare them for future challenges in the context of new emerging technologies. There is a need to scrutinize the curricula of the topmost university to see what efforts have been laid out by them to make the graduates competent enough to survive the new challenges.
Purpose: The paper aims to study the new inventions in the field of accounting and auditing and how do the educational institutions take part in implementing the new inventions towards the students to make them ready for the challenge. We discuss the role of big data, artificial intelligence how have they changed the accounting procedures and why it is necessary for the accountants to get on with these subjects.
Data: Document analysis were carried for the catalogues of each university selected, the main purpose was to look in detail about the how and what is being taught to the accounting students, additionally the college website was scrutinized to see additional efforts taken up by college in the form of seminars/events. Methods: Content analysis was used to collect the research data and weight ranking system was used to evaluate the effectiveness of curriculums.
Findings: It was found that the top university ranked in the world have started integrating the data analytics and artificial intelligence in their module through various ways, however, there is still more work that needs to be done and we found a major change in the ranking of universities when ranked by giving preference to data analytics course structure.
Result: The universities have put some efforts towards integration of technical courses and not only through theoretical teaching but also through internships and project-based learning, however, the accounting curricula still needs to be worked upon in these universities and should be taken on priority as these are the most prestigious universities of the world.