In this article the author discusses various methods of teaching cost accounting to accountancy students. It is apparent that the instructor may have either of two points of view in teaching accounting. The subject may be considered primarily as a skill, a technique, or a method of recording and summarizing the facts of business transactions. With such an aim, emphasis will be placed upon the accounting processes and much time will be spent on accounting procedure. On the other hand, accounting may very well serve the useful purpose of providing a method for teaching business processes. Cost Accounting is a very specialized, detailed technique and is concerned with bringing an intelligent order out of a mass of details. But, it may be more than that for the college student, for it is in the field of costs that accounting touches so closely that division of economics, production, and most easily understood by him. According to the author, if a study of cost accounting throws new light upon economic values, then, one may believe, the student has acquired a deeper insight into the social structure; has been given a useful key to other values.

Many students of accounting have investigated with thoroughness the question of whether or not accounting is included in the curricula of many liberal arts colleges, as well as the number and scope of courses usually offered. These investigations show that accounting has attained a position of no minor importance in such curricula and that liberal arts colleges are offering an increasing number of advanced as well as elementary courses, as of March 1933. Since we recognize that the study of accounting has taken its place by the side of the study of literature and the classics, a spirit of inquiry leads us to ask whether it is justified to call accounting a liberal arts subject and, if so, does the nature of the college necessitate a different approach or an adaptation of content in the accounting course. It is with these two questions that this article deals. The goal of the educator should certainly be to train the youth to live in the particular environment in which he finds himself. As environments change there is every reason why the field of his study, too, must change, for his social adjustment and his philosophy of life must turn upon his understanding and interpretation of his surroundings.