CAP Vol. 1 No. 1 — PCC vol. 1, n o 1 (2002) pages 53–104 © CAAA/ ACPC A Canadian Accounting Perspectives Forum on the Future of Accounting Education: Editorial ALAN J. RICHARDSON, Editor, Queen’s University The AAA monograph by W. Steve Albrecht and Robert J. Sack entitled Accounting Educa- tion: Charting the Course through a Perilous Future raises serious concerns about the state and prospects of accounting education in the United States. They warn that the number of students choosing accounting as a major is declining, that accounting practitioners find that the current accounting curriculum is obsolete, and that those who have followed accounting as a career would not make the same choice again. They attribute the malaise in U.S. accounting education to the inability of accounting educators to adapt to techno- logical change, the globalization of business, and the increasing power of institutional investors to demand more comprehensive disclosures. Many of the concerns raised by Albrecht and Sack reflect the institutional environment of the United States, and the question whether they apply in a Canadian context is debatable. For example, accounting education in Canada is provided primarily through business schools, whereas in the United States it is provided through stand-alone accounting schools. Does this mean that Albrecht’s and Sack’s concerns about the lack of integration of accounting education with other disciplines in the United States will be less of an issue in Canada? In addition, Canada has been an open economy subject to world markets for most of its products far longer than has the United States. Does this mean that Canadian accounting educators have already integrated global issues into their curriculum? While the issues Albrecht and Sack raise deserve consideration, we cannot immediately assume that the problems or the proposals for reform apply in all contexts. One of the functions of Canadian Accounting Perspectives is to provide a forum for debate on accounting education issues in Canada. This will include publishing research on accounting education in the tradition of the Contemporary Accounting Research Special Education Research Issue (1994). These will be refereed papers that meet the usual quality standards of the journal. Canadian Accounting Perspectives will also publish commentaries and forums on education issues. These contributions are intended to stimulate discussion and debate. Members of the editorial board will review the contributions to ensure that they are timely, thoughtful, readable, and relevant. In this issue of the journal, we use the forum format to examine the applicability of Albrecht’s and Sack’s analysis to Canada. The forum is a set of interrelated papers that N. B. French resumés of each contribution in the Forum appear at the end of each segment. References for the Forum as a whole appear on page 104.