EVALUATING POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS’AWARENESS OF FORENSIC ACCOUNTING AS A TOOL FOR FRAUD DETECTION AND PREVENTION

EVALUATING POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS’AWARENESS OF FORENSIC ACCOUNTING AS A TOOL FOR FRAUD DETECTION AND PREVENTION

Kong Yusheng, Stephen Kwadwo Antwi, Mohammed Musah, Mandella Osei-Assibey Bonsu, Mary Donkor

The ever-increasing incidence of fraud has raised concerns about the kind of accounting education provided to students all over the world. The importance of forensic accounting as a discipline aimed at helping organizations to detect and prevent fraud has necessitated its inclusion in accounting curriculum of universities to train more capable accountants. This study seeks to examine the awareness of international postgraduate students on forensic accounting as a tool to aid in fraud detection and prevention. A questionnaire was administered with 156 international postgraduate accounting and finance students from 24 different countries studying in universities in China. The results show that there is a very low level of awareness on forensic accounting among international postgraduate students studying in Chinese universities. The findings also indicate the lack of improved forensic accounting integration into the educational curriculum of the universities that the participants pursued their previous accounting degrees. The study recommends that Chinese universities integrate forensic accounting into their accounting curriculum especially at the postgraduate level to introduce students to the emerging discipline. The universities should also mount specialized forensic accounting programs as obtained in most universities in the US to bridge the gap created as a result of lack of awareness among international students, especially from Asia and Africa. This will go a long way to mitigate possible fraud that may arise as a result of investment in the global economy through the Belt and Roads Initiative of China.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=-U-tBVYAAAAJ&cstart=20&pagesize=80&citation_for_view=-U-tBVYAAAAJ:YsMSGLbcyi4C

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