The article discusses the distinction between the conventional and some of the suggested methods of reporting fixed assets as they affect business income. This is done by presenting an article by professors R.L. Dickens and J.O. Blackburn published in the April 1964 issue of the journal The Accounting Review. These published accounts aid stockholders and other outsiders to project the future earnings and financial condition of the corporation and to assist with the evaluation of the performance of management. According to the author, as the individual requirements of different users of published accounts are unlikely to be cognate, one set of accounts will scarcely fulfill the needs of all stockholders and other outsiders, no matter how "objectively" the asset values contained therein are determined. He suggests that replacement cost, "realizable value," "historic cost," and "historic cost adjusted for price level changes," can provide a basis upon which stockholders and other interested external parties can project the earnings and financial condition of the enterprise according to their own requirements.

The article reports on recommendations made by the 1964 American Accounting Association Committee on Teacher Development regarding methods and approaches for development of individuals with no teaching experience who aspire to be career accounting instructors. A good teacher should restrict subject matter to be presented in a course to the level of the students' comprehension. At the same time he should stress the relationship of accounting to other fields of business and economics. Accounting teachers must be able to explain accounting. The explanation must be clear, to the point, and adequate. Teachers can identify significant concepts that should be understood and remembered, so that student learning efforts can be channeled to subject-matter areas of major importance. The committee was charged to be primarily concerned with three groups of teachers--doctoral candidates, beginning part-time teachers, and newly-employed staff members with no prior experience in teaching. Doctoral candidates who expect to become teachers should have some carefully supervised teaching experience when pursuing graduate studies.