EARLY UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN ACCOUNTANCY.

University education for business is of recent origin. Forty years ago only one university in the U.S. had a school whose major purpose was to aid in equipping students for careers in the business world. Since then the growth in the number of these schools of university grade has been rapid. Today, thousands of students are attending courses which are classified as business courses in the colleges of commerce, finance and accounts and in the colleges of liberal arts. Accountancy as a business study has moved rapidly toward the front ranks of the business subjects during this period. The purpose of this paper is to endeavor to shed some light on the contents of accounting courses and on the problems of teaching accounting during the years when the subject was first offered in institutions of higher learning. The period to be covered will be limited to the two decades preceding 1903. This period represents about one-third of the time during which accounting has been taught in these institutions. To shorten the period would result in confining the paper to courses as taught in one or two institutions. During the early years of the new century the courses in accounting were beginning to assume more definite form and content and to increase in number, due partly to the growth of the CPA movement and partly to the growing consciousness of the increasing importance of business education and of accounting in particular.