Date of Award

5-2014

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Accounting

Advisor/Committee Chair

Ingrid Fisher

Abstract

The value of a forensic education is becoming more important as the accounting world moves past the scandals that have caused set backs and distrust in recent years. Exclusively looking at the education aspect is something that has not been explored compared to the previous studies completed valuing experience. As part of an auditor’s duty to serve the public and report material misstatements in companies’ financial statements, having the knowledge needed to properly assess risk and identify fraud is very important. Forensic degrees are at the forefront of accounting education and have become more widespread in programs, courses, and certificates. To gain a better understanding of forensic education, studying two groups of masters’ students, one being in the Forensic Accounting major and the other being in the Professional Accounting major, the ability of the trained versus the untrained is compared. The results showed a strong influence of education on their ability to detect fraud in a given company’s financial statements. The average grade of the forensic students was a total of 5.04 points out of ten higher than the professional accounting students. The benefit of fraud knowledge on a student’s ability to detect fraud implies the strong relationship between the two. With an increased forensic understanding, auditors could better detect fraud and help better serve the people. This heightened awareness to fraud and its detection could lead to a change in the course requirements with earning an accounting degree.

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