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probably won't incorporate IFRS education until the 2011 academic year. From page 47 accounting education is a platform from which students can launch great careers, either as accountants or as valuable members of a management team." And once IFRS standards are firmly in place, students might launch those careers anywhere in the world, says Presha Neider- meyer of WVU. "As we move to a global focus, our students will know the reporting standards for a hundred countries. With their degrees and their passports, they can go virtually anywhere." Higher Standards Even as they focus on new programs and new jobs, accounting educa- tors also are paying close attention to the recent turmoil in the markets. The fallout is spurring some of them to bring ethics and account- ability to the forefront in their classrooms. For instance, IESE is putting a great deal of emphasis on "the ethical impli- cations of aggressive accounting reporting," says Peñalva. It will be up to accounting educa- tors to help students understand the pres- sures that managers face, he says—and the consequences of misreporting numbers. It also will be their job to teach students to respect the principles behind the accounting standards, not just the standards themselves. Says Peñalva, "We want our students to use accounting to provide a true and fair view of the economic situation of the firm. We teach them to ask, 'If I were the reader of this financial report, is this what I would like to see?'" Indeed, some of accounting's new cachet comes from just such a belief that accountants have the knowledge and the ability to provide "true and fair" reports for any company that hires them. As schools develop new programs, add IFRS standards to their curricu- lum, and bring real-world cases into the classroom, they will be turning out exactly the kinds of graduates today's corpo- rations need. Lawrence Richter Quinn is a free-lance financial writer based in Atlanta, Georgia. award $700,000 in grants to colleges to help them prepare U.S. accounting students for IFRS; the grants are part of a $1 million commitment PwC has made to support IFRS education. Initially, the program will assist 26 U.S. schools in adding IFRS to their curricula. Colleges and universities are expected to use the grants to update accounting courses, transform textbooks, and enhance the focus on international business. PwC is also providing educational material directly to students and faculty through a suite of Web-based videos and tools available at www.pwc.tv. Similarly, Ernst & Young (www.ey.com) has committed $1 million to the Ernst & Young Academic Resource Cen- ter, a collaboration between E&Y professionals and univer- sity faculty that focuses on bringing IFRS into the curricu- lum. KPMG has launched the KPMG IFRS Institute (www. kpmgifrsinstitute.com), an open forum with Webcasts, pod- casts, surveys, publications, and other materials to facilitate knowledge sharing and adoption of best practices through- out the industry. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also has put extensive information online at www.sec.gov/spotlight/ ifrsroadmap.htm. This site includes transcripts of roundtable discussions about IFRS among members of industry and aca- demia, as well as other materials. Knowledgeable Friends More personalized and hands-on help also will get accounting programs geared up to teach IFRS. Schools report that they are calling on alums and advisory councils for guidance or ask- ing in-house international accounting experts to hold training workshops for other professors who teach relevant courses. "Up to this point, our faculty members have benefited sig- nificantly from receiving relevant materials from our friends in the profession," says Don Tidrick, Deloitte professor of accountancy at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. "In particular, the executive advisory council members have pro- vided input and guidance over time to help us stay connected to relevant professional developments." European professors also have advice to offer to their American counterparts. First, grow accustomed to the idea that the adoption of international standards is inevitable. "U.S. schools need to understand that it is not a matter of whether the U.S. will adopt IFRS, but at what speed it will adopt IFRS," says Joos of Tilburg University. "The ongoing convergence will generate standards that are identical." Second, realize it might not be so bad. "No accounting faculty should experience any difficulty teaching IFRS," says Fernando Peñalva, associate professor of accounting and 48 BizEd JULY/AUGUST 2009 The biggest problem is that textbooks