Transforming the Accounting Curricula by Assessing Soft Skills: Insights from South African Universities
Abstract
This study explores the integration of soft skills assessment within accountancy programmes to facilitate curriculum transformation in South African higher education. Building on prior work that highlights the critical role of non-technical skills for graduate employability, the research addresses a gap in the literature concerning a standardised framework for producing comparable accounting graduates. The study adopted a pragmatic, exploratory qualitative approach, gathering data through semi-structured interviews with academic staff from 12 SAICA-accredited universities. The findings reveal that soft skills are assessed through a mix of formal and informal methods, heavily reliant on individual instructor discretion. A significant barrier identified is resource disparity among institutions, which, coupled with varying levels of staff and student readiness, adversely impacts the consistency and quality of graduate outcomes. The study’s implications point to the need for professional bodies and universities to collaborate on a unified framework and a shared resource bank. The value of this paper lies in its proposal of a contextual framework aimed at standardising soft skills assessment, thereby transforming the accounting curriculum to yield graduates who are more practice-ready and comparable across the South African higher education landscape.
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