Iowa State University Accounting students have a variety of accounting elective courses from which to choose to satisfy elective requirements. While a variety of factors influence which accounting electives students choose, there is little definitive guidance available to current students looking to select accounting electives based on career aspirations. This study assesses the usefulness of Iowa State University’s accounting electives in common post-graduate career paths so students can make better-informed academic decisions. 166 Iowa State accounting graduates participated in a survey asking them to confidentially share post-graduate career details and evaluate aspects of Iowa State’s accounting elective courses most useful in their careers. The results of the study revealed some electives are better adapted to CPA preparation than others, but all elective courses provide some degree of usefulness in preparing students for any career demands. Major trends identified include strong preferences for graduates employed in public accounting to enroll in ACCT 488 and ACCT 495, and for graduates employed in the private sector to enroll in ACCT 483. Survey participants indicated usefulness of ACCT 495 for career preparation and ACCT 384 for CPA preparation, although students enroll in these courses for other reasons than their usefulness indicated by the survey.

With technological advancements and high demand for goods and services worldwide a global economy has become commonplace, and by extension a need for a comparable financial reporting system. This research aims to provide an overview of the two most relevant accounting standards (US GAAP and IFRS) in use today and examines how these standards operate as well as serve the needs of their respective stakeholders. Additionally, this research addresses three specific areas of accounting revenue recognition, inventory valuation, and leases - and examine the implications convergence of these accounting standards would have on investors, management, and other stakeholders. The revenue recognition section will explain the steps to recognizing revenue under the new standard. The inventory section will examine the existing similarities and identify areas preventing complete convergence. The leases section will compare the previous leasing standards under US GAAP and IFRS to the new guidance. Finally, this research addresses the overall feasibility of the US attaining complete convergence to IFRS

This paper utilizes the lessons learned in all major introductory classes in the College of Business at Iowa State University to create a business plan for a new coffee house. The goal of the paper was to see if what I have learned in all my introductory major classes at the College of Business could help me build a small business. While at Iowa State every student in the College of Business is required to take an introductory class in all of the majors offered. The majors offered currently are Accounting, Finance, Management, Management Information Systems, Marketing, and Supply Chain Management. During the research phase I looked at notes and textbooks of past classes at Iowa State, as well as online resources. The project relied heavily on creativity because of the freedom that comes with building your own company. The finished business plan gives a background on the history of coffee, what I have learned from the College of Business, and how I applied the knowledge learned to open a new coffee house.

Cheating is defined as taking information, credit, or reward that one neither deserves nor did the work to achieve. Cheating behavior is often seen as a driver behind many of our current economic problems and the temptation to cheat has been associated with our downward slide in business practice for the past two decades. For example, the current housing crisis has been explained in part as banks cheating in terms of qualifying people for loans. Additionally, current headlines focus on legislators and Wall Street analysts who cheat investors by unfairly taking advantage of inside information not publicly available to others in the market. Cheating defeats fairness of competition and undermines the basis of business integrity. Writers in the business press are expressing concern over the widespread levels of ‘cheating’ among business executives. Enron, HealthSouth, and Tyco, all cheated shareholders in order to pad the pockets of their corporate executives. Some of the smartest and best business minds have fallen subject to the temptation to cheat and the result has been some of the most wideranging financial regulation in our history. The Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank Acts were enacted in reaction to the perceived prevalence of cheating by business managers. The controversial new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is yet another attempt to address this problem. Classroom teachers are also experiencing a growing concern over what seems to be ever increasing levels of cheating among students. Students cheat for a variety of reasons including a felt pressure to maintain good grades and because they perceive many opportunities to cheat but few real penalties for getting caught. Instructor behavior may unwittingly exacerbate the problem by giving unclear or arbitrary assignments that create a climate for cheating when students view the benefits of figuring out and completing the assignment honestly to be minimal at best. The problem of classroom cheating is that students are likely to carry the behaviors they learn in the classroom into the workplace. It is this prospect that leads us to examine the nature of classroom cheating as a precursor to what might happen in actual business settings. It is likely that many of us have cheated at something or in some way, however unimportant, in our lives. We may have taken advantage of unsuspecting others in sports or play and the amount of harm done is probably very little and accepted as part of the interaction. But when the stakes get higher and include academic or business integrity and the validity of a grade or financial statement are at stake, then cheating has significant potential consequences, and needs to be both understood and managed.

The goal of this study is to build upon previous research, studying the knowledge of taxation in elementary children, by researching the same idea in college-aged students. To do so, students were surveyed regarding various demographics and taxation topics in terms of general knowledge, taxation concepts that are currently relevant to our target subject, and taxation topics that will be relevant to them in the future. Our results showed that students had a moderate level of general knowledge that was consistent across variables. They also showed that in terms of taxation topics that are currently relevant, being older and having more in student loans led to a generally higher level of understanding. For topics with future relevance, a higher economic status correlated to a higher understanding. We also found that several of the variables tested led to insignificant correlations. This led us to conclude that student’s tax knowledge may be set prior to attending college, and this age group as a whole still lacks a great deal of tax knowledge that they are expected to possess as contributing members of society.