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.