Pension Accountants - Where Are You?
A crisis is upon us. According to Wall Street Journal reporter Ronald Alsop, U.S. business schools are scrambling to find qualified professors in accounting, finance and management, respectively. (See "Ph.D. Shortage: Business Schools Seek Professors, January 9, 2007) Alsop offers sobering statistics, courtesy of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International). A current estimated shortage of 1,000 Ph.D.s is expected to grow to 2,400 by 2012. Supply and demand dynamics are in full force with B-school salaries on the rise. Unfortunately, money alone will not help. Someone starting doctoral studies today will be lucky to finish by 2011 and that's if they attend on a full-time basis, ignoring the lure of Wall Street.
While one can reasonably dispute the merits of putting Ph.D.s in the classroom (versus industry practitioners), the reality is that business school accreditation mandates certain coverage ratios. When too few academically qualified professors are available to teach, courses are cut, class size is reduced and/or admissions are scaled back.
Under any of these scenarios, fewer students become business school graduates. The resulting dearth of trained technicians is problematic. At a time when new pension accounting rules are upon us, investing is global and financial engineering requires more than a passing knowledge of basic concepts, where will much-needed expertise come from?
