Partnering with Practice: Staffing toAchieve Excellence inAccounting Education

The supply of research-based, tenure-track accounting faculty is not com- mensurate with the demand. To address this challenge, colleges and universities, in- cluding those who typically rely upon adjuncts and clinical faculty, may wish to consider entering into a formal collaboration with a public accounting firm whereby a partner with support from the firm commits to teach an accounting course or a designated module in a course. One pilot program—the Partner Teaches Program PTP, recently inaugu- rated by a public accounting firm—provided the opportunity to study the impact of such a program and generate recommendations. The findings support the conclusion that properly selected partners, matched with the demands of a particular course and prop- erly prepared, supported, and integrated into the curriculum, can make significant posi- tive contributions to accounting education. Based on these data, we have made rec- ommendations to encourage firms and schools to consider initiating similar arrangements. pilot program, herein referred to as the Partner Teaches Program PTP, was designed by a large public accounting firm to explore the benefits of transforming informal teaching arrangements into a formal collaboration between educational institutions and the spon- soring firm. The architecture of this formal collaboration is intended to establish a teaching relationship between the educational institution and the firm that would endure beyond the efforts of the particular individuals. The PTP pilot included a formal assessment process. To evaluate the effectiveness of this pilot program, data were collected from three groups of stakeholders: stu- dents, department chairs, and partner faculty. Specifically, the students were surveyed at the conclusion of the term, and structured telephone interviews were conducted with the chairs of each accounting department and with the partner faculty. The PTP pilot program serves as a demonstration project. Our results provide insight and direction to accounting educators and practitioners who have implemented or will consider imple- menting this concept in a manner that is responsive to their local conditions. In this paper, we review staffing issues, describe the distinctive features of the PTP pilot, report the evaluation results, and make recommendations for similar programs.