"A Few Bad Apples in the Bunch?": A Post-Enron Examination of the Business Student's Perception of the Prestige of the Accounting Profession

Abstract

Unlike many of the financial scandals and corporate failures of the 1990s, the Enron collapse appears to be different in many facets. The Enron failure has prompted a full-blown reassessment of the accounting and financial reporting industry, corporate governance practices, regulatory oversight mechanisms and the integrity of the United States’ securities markets. The purpose of this study is to increase our understanding of the future business persons’ perception regarding the prestige and respect of the accounting profession and other related occupations. An additional purpose is to examine how the perceptions of certain professions and occupations related to the Enron collapse have faired in the past year. Finally, a further purpose is to compare the study’s results of a non-random sample of business students to the results of the weighted sample of U.S. residents compiled by Harris Interactive. Our exploratory findings suggest that the public’s perception of the accounting professions has not significantly changed post-Enron. This withstanding, accounting educators and practitioners face a challenge in repositioning the profession in a more positive light in