Statistics relating to accounting majors and programs give an idea of the statistics of demand for accounting education, which is merely the other side of the coin indicating the statistics of supply for the country over. Some estimate of the social importance of the subject is also possible from the figures. The statistics show the relative importance of accounting in the total offerings of collegiate schools of business. Data available are of use in still other ways, including the problems they raise as to teacher supply and logistics of space and time in scheduling classes, providing physical facilities, etc. An interesting disclosure is the extent to which "general" courses, representing the usual elementary, intermediate and advanced study in general accounting, cut into total hours offered. The one-year course in cost accounting that is found in more and more schools covers important topics that still take an inordinate amount of space and attention in so-called intermediate accounting courses.

The direction, nature, emphasis and objectives of accounting education, since its beginning at the collegiate level, have been influenced by a number of ideas, conditions, and relationships with other segments of academic work. This paper attempts to outline and assess the roles which the more important of these influences have played in the development of accounting education. The movement for collegiate training for accounting quickly ran aground in some colleges, due to the opposition of departments of economics. The dominant attitude of the economists in this group of colleges was that business courses in general, and accounting courses in particular, had no place in the college catalog. The study of Marshallian economics, it was asserted, was adequate intellectual nourishment for everybody, supplemented perhaps by a half-dozen courses in the periphery of the field dealing with "applied" studies. In other colleges, the movement to establish accounting programs met a different, though equally determined, tactical opposition from the economists.

Reviews the book "A Guide to Management Accounting," by H.W. Broad and K.S. Carmichael.

Reviews the book "Specialized Accounting," by H.S. Pace and E.J. Koestler.

The article presents intermediate accounting instructions in the year 1955. Instruction in intermediate accounting was surveyed through a questionnaire that was sent to 100 colleges in the spring of 1955. Answers were received from two-thirds of the colleges. The survey dealt with the state of instruction as it is, rather than as it might be, but the latter aspect was not entirely overlooked. The course seems to be firmly established in schools offering a more or less complete study of accounting. Schools with a three-year program in accounting offer the intermediate course in the second year, typically for the full year. The force of this impression is reduced, though not materially, by two further disclosures. Second, certain topics in a book were omitted, even in a year course. Leading the list of topics omitted is review of accounting process, which was mentioned 4 times. In the survey, it was asked that should the teachers be tagged for intermediate accounting as one of the specialized fields in which to teach. The answers received show that 31 schools regard the intermediate course as a specialized field, 16 do not, rotating teachers; have combination policies, and 12 pursue no positive policy on the question.

Reviews the book "Cost Accounting," by Homer St. Clair Pace and Edward J. Koestler.

Reviews the book "Basic Accounting," part II, by Homer St. Clair and Edward J. Koestler.

Reviews the book "Corporation Accounting," by Homer St. Clair Pace and Edward J. Koestler.

Machine methods, the key to office automation, have developed impressively ever since the invention of the adding machine in the 1880's. Soon afterwards appeared the desk calculators. These milestones of machine method have progressively increased the areas of "automated" office operations. They have thereby progressively narrowed the need for the pencil and paper, the elemental tools of the accountant. As savers of human energy and time, all devices for mechanizing office tasks possess the same attributes, and the differences between them are relative only, important as the differences are. All of the known devices will continue to be useful, for the situations in the modern office in which machine methods are needed are as varied as they are vast. No doubt the future will see a more frequent reassessment of the functional usefulness of a particular machine in use to see if its versatility, speed and capability enable it to perform a task as economically as some other machine available in the market.

Accounting is passing through the familiar stages that other and older fields have traversed in their development. In accounting, as in other fields, practice preceded theory. Practice went forward on a hit-and-miss basis, but it went forward. There was no ready reference to a body of carefully reasoned principles, and there was no time, under the press of everyday business, to develop one. In the first stage of accounting development, about the only steadying factor was the high caliber of the men engaged in evolving practice. These men mostly relied on their common sense to solve problems. Modem accounting is now struggling through the second stage of its development, the stage of criticism. The criticism is mostly of practice including terminological disputes but criticism has also been made and received on such fragments of theory as we find in written form. The present stage has also changed course and shifted emphasis by reason of an ever tightening trend of governmental regulation, and ever increasing burden of taxation on concerns and individuals alike.