Lifelong Learning in Digital World: A Perspective From Accounting and Auditing Occupation

University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH) has been implementing a restructuring strategy, aiming to become a multidisciplinary and sustainable UEH University to meet the needs of the country’s economic development, contributing to the spread of knowledge, civilization and comprehensive educational values ​​to the community in terms of international integration in education and training direction. Accounting-Auditing (AA) is one of the training disciplines that, annually, always occupy a high percentage of students because training quality and reputation have been verified along with UEH 45-year brand.

Industrial Revolution 4.0 and necessity of life-long learning 

Industrial Revolution 4.0 (Industrial Revolution), with the advancement and outstanding development of information, science, and technology, has created significant changes in the life of each individual and the entire social organizational working structure. The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has made information provision not to be dependent upon time and space any longer. Industry 4.0 also creates challenges for the workforce. In terms of the contexts of globalization and global workforce growth, Industrial Revolution 4.0 challenges should be addressed thanks to lifelong learning.

Governments in many countries around the world have implemented diverse educational reform measures to make lifelong learning as part of national education policies and strived to enact guidelines, actions, and policies with the purpose of encouraging and supporting citizens for skills and knowledge improvement through lifelong learning. Vietnamese Politburo has affirmed that building a learning citizen model be an urgent task to be performed so as to meet Industrial Revolution 4.0 requirements. Decision number 749/QD-TTg dated June 30^th, 2020 of Vietnamese Prime Minister has emphasized that lifelong learning is considered as one of the core values ​​of decisive nature because this affects society, changes people’s awareness quickly, brings high efficiency to develop people’s knowledge and prosperous society.

UEH and lifelong learning necessity in Accounting-Auditing Specialization

University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH) has been implementing a restructuring strategy, aiming to become a multidisciplinary and sustainable UEH University to meet the needs of the country’s economic development, contributing to the spread of knowledge, civilization and comprehensive educational values ​​to the community in terms of international integration in education and training direction. Accounting-Auditing (AA) is one of the training disciplines that, annually, always occupy a high percentage of students because training quality and reputation have been verified along with UEH 45-year brand.

In digital transformation process, together with ICTs development, Accounting-Auditing (AA) specialization is in the top group of occupations that are highly likely to be automated and digitized in the near future. A number of new technologies have had a strong impact on the accounting profession, listing as accounting software, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, cloud accounting (Cloud-Based Accounting), blockchain technology (Blockchain Technology), technologies that support information presentation, artificial intelligence (AI), big data and big data analytics as well as computer-assisted audit techniques (CAATs). The application of these new technologies has created great opportunities as well as challenges for Accounting-Auditing (AA) occupation. With the support of ICTs, economic and technical activities can be carried out easily, comprehensively and quickly. It creates many new opportunities for practitioners who wish to develop themselves. ICTs is also an indispensable factor for competition and development and a must for businesses to survive. However, in accordance with the research by Gulin et al. (2019), automation makes the workload of accounting staff significantly reduced, leading to the possibility that about 40% of accounting and auditing jobs will disappear in the future. Technical engineering ranks 21^st out of 366 occupations likely to be eliminated due to AI introduction, with a rejection rate of 96% (Stacheva-Todorova, 2018).

In accordance with Vietnam Association of Certified Public Accountants (VACPA), the biggest challenge facing accounting and auditing occupation is the need to restructure the development strategy. It is necessary to have solutions for economic and technical human resource development to meet the high requirements of professional qualifications and professional skills, including ICTs skills to meet the development requirements of Industry 4.0. Because of the rapid change of environment and technology, the best strategy to boost economic accounting human resources in our country is to form lifelong learning skills for those as accounting and auditing practitioners.

With the rapid change of environment and technology, the best strategy to develop the economic accounting human resources in Vietnam is to form lifelong learning skills for the accountants.

Our research results on approximately 300 people studying and practicing accounting and auditing occupation in Vietnam show that they plan to continue studying to improve their professional capacity. It is worth noting that their lifelong learning needs come from the needs of the accounting and auditing practitioners themselves, rather than the mandatory requirements of the units they are working for. In addition, survey respondents also agreed that Vietnamese deepening-economic integration will create many opportunities for accounting and auditing practitioners to continue to study and improve their capacity. However, along with the opportunities, economic integration also creates threats of strong competition in the accounting and auditing occupation and requires people working in this field to continuously study to improve their capacity.

Being well aware of accounting and auditing practitioners’ needs in the current national economic context, UEH has been focusing on investing and building many practical solutions to form lifelong learning skills for students studying at UEH university.

Lifelong learning within accounting and auditing specialization at UEH

From the necessity of lifelong learning, specifically for the accounting and auditing profession as analyzed above, especially in the current digital transformation period, UEH University, along with the goal of a sustainable university, introduces some sustainable solutions in accounting and auditing training. These solutions aim to develop lifelong learning in learners and have received positive feedback from employers and other stakeholders.

In terms of training program

At UEH, the accounting and auditing training program has always been updated with the latest publications from famous universities in TOP 200 of the world, consequently, helping learners accumulate knowledge regarding accounting and auditing in accordance with Vietnamese regulations and international accounting and auditing practices. In addition, accounting and auditing training program is also integrated with the programs from international professional associations (ACCA, CIMA, CPA, ICEAW), assisting learners to have both in-depth theoretical knowledge and proficient practice skills with the purpose of gaining international practice certificates right at UEH. Therefore, accounting and auditing training program is designed with a balance among knowledge, skills and attitudes; between theory and practice to help learners, after graduation, to become high-quality accounting and auditing practitioners, to foster communication ability comprehensively in an English-speaking working environment and to be fully equipped with skills necessary for comprehensively profession. This meets the core goal of the program, which is to instill a passion for learners to develop lifelong learning, scientific researching with a sense of respect for professional ethics and the ability to enhance their personal career in the country or in Asian region within Vietnamese international labor integration process.

In terms of teaching methodology

The main teaching method applied within UEH training program is learner-centered with combination with IT (LMS system, social media like: Zoom, MS team, etc.) Google Meet, game-based learning apps like Kahoot, Quizzes), to create excitement and maintain learning continuity, consequently, helping to enhance lifelong learning for learners. In particular, UEH has applied the ‘blend classroom’ and ‘hybrid classroom’ methods in teaching. These methods include synchronous and asynchronous learning processes, helping learners’ learning and research processes to be effective in overcoming all current barriers of space, time, and epidemics as well as learners access online learning resources easily.

In terms of ICTs capacity enhancement in accounting and auditing profession

The inclusion of ICT-related modules in the training program helps learners to apply information technology (IT), especially new technologies in accounting and auditing fields effectively in organization and management accounting work towards serving the information needs of different subjects. In addition, UEH University has cooperated with international professional organizations (for example: ICEAW) to periodically organize seminars and seminars on ICTs in accounting and auditing profession so that knowledge of new technologies can be boost widely so as to raise learners’ knowledge level regarding ICTs and modern technologies applied in accounting and auditing development. In addition to the solutions that have been effectively implemented in the past time, UEH is developing “Strengthening IT application in accounting and auditing training program for 2021-2022 period” Project with the goal of cooperation quality improvement with enterprises in the field of applying ICTs in accounting and auditing specialization so that the training program is able to approach the practical reality in order to improve IT skills and knowledge for both learners and lecturers and encourage learners to carry out researches on accounting and auditing fields in the context of ICTs impacts.

In terms of infrastructure facilities and learning-support policies

In order to support learners to be ready for 4.0 Industrial Revolution, to develop ICTs capabilities to serve their academic and professional careers, UEH has fully prepared a modern technology infrastructure system for learners’ learning and research activities, including a smart classroom system that combines ICT devices and applications for teaching and learning, a system of practice rooms and simulation rooms, as well as a smart library system (Smart Library). In addition, UEH University also develops a financial support policy to help learners afford to pay and maintain lifelong learning for a career in accounting and auditing fields.

Along with comprehensive solutions that have been implemented, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH) always accompanies Vietnamese government to build a learning society with lifelong learning skills towards the sustainable development of the accounting and auditing profession in particular and that of the country in general.

Please refer to the full research Lifelong Learning in Digital World: A Perspective From Accounting and Auditing Occupation here. Author group is composed of: Dr. Trần Anh Hoa, Dr. Phạm Trà Lam, Dr. Đậu Thị Kim Thoa, MSc. Trần Thị Phương Thanh (Accounting Department – UEH School of Business).

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