The extensive plans of the American Institute of Accountants for organized research are a highly promising feature of near-future developments in accountancy. And suggestions made at meetings of the American Accounting Association regarding a statement of cost accounting principles and an analysis of the curriculum problems involved in accounting education point in the same direction. Another suggestion has recently appeared which could be made a basis for enlarging the extent of accounting research activities and coordinating the projects in that field. It comes from Gay Carroll, controller of the Humble Oil and Refining Co., and was made in the course of an address on December 19, 1944, before the Houston Control of the Comptroller's Institute. Accounting principles and technical standards are of such broad significance that their usefulness extends beyond any single organization. Therefore their formulation in words, or when necessary, their later restatement, should be of interest to all organizations in contact with accounting.

Public accountants have had a growing conviction for some time that the Certified Public Accountant laws are in need of carefully considered modernization. Now, after extended consideration in committee, the American Institute of Accountants has published a form of bill that state societies will find useful in planning new legislation. If public accounting is to be widely and effectively recognized as a real profession, it has need of statutory recognition of just such aspects as restriction, discipline, education. This will not imply that legislation can create a profession out of an occupation. A profession creates itself. Technical competence comes from study and experience only. The need of the public for technical services arises more from the Complexities of business than out of legislation. And the most effective discipline is self-imposed. Public accountants have created high standards of discipline and have educated themselves to high professional competence. Public accounting in the U.S. has developed until it has come to serve an important public function.

How can accounting teachers, individually and through the activities of the American Accounting Association, cooperate most effectively in turning the attention of promising students toward the possibilities existing in an accounting career? The columns of the periodical "The Accounting Review" are open to those who have ideas to contribute and questions to raise. The usefulness to an individual of knowing something of his aptitudes for accounting work is easily appreciated. But the teacher faces certain problems in that connection. It will be particularly difficult to advise those students who are highly capable, since they probably can succeed in any one of a number of occupations. In all fields the most capable newcomers are the most desired. Therefore each teacher may be expected to favor his own field of specialization. Is there any danger that teachers may fall into competitive counseling? Will it be necessary to develop a wide series of aptitude tests pointed toward the various careers visualized in the program of a college of commerce? May it not be that counseling directed toward superior students will result in ignoring the slower students? The advantages of education should not be reserved for an intellectual aristocracy; possibly the best students need the least advice.

The article presents information on the accounting exchange. Plans are being made that have much promise for bringing the American Institute of Accountants and the American Accounting Association into close cooperation for considering the educational problems of accountancy. Joint meetings are being planned to explore ways of finding and expressing ideas that may aid in the continued development of education for careers in accountancy. It is evident from the tentative agenda of topics for discussion, that plenty of useful work is waiting. Some of the topics for discussion are: (1) curricula for persons preparing for accountancy, (2) programs for the employment of college graduates best qualified for public accountancy, (3) desirable content for a pamphlet for the use of persons planning for careen in accounting. (4) preparation of an up-to-date bibliography of important books on accounting and its related fields of specialization, (5) policy to be followed by the Institute in meeting requests for recommendations as to schools in which to study accounting (6) programs of staff training and (7) plans for lectures by members of the Institute before student bodies.

Representative programs from sixty colleges and analyses of them have appeared in four earlier issues of periodical The Accounting Review. In the section published in October the educational pattern was presented in a number of frequency tables showing the distribution of courses among the several departments of instruction. It is now proposed to show the pattern as it is reflected in the titles of the courses taken by this group of sixty students. The commerce courses will be examined first. These include accountancy, economics, business administration and business law. The data about courses in non-commerce subjects will follow. The content of a specific course is not too well foreshadowed by the title of the course. And this limitation would still apply in some degree if the text book used were also named. Although course names are not standardized and sometimes seem unnecessarily vague, they nevertheless can furnish some useful clues to the educational pattern followed by the students concerned. For students who major in accountancy, the courses in that department naturally bulk large in most programs. At the top of the list are the courses called by various titles that indicate they are introductory and intermediate.