美国会计学会会刊之一Accounting Horizons在第21卷第2期（2007年6月）发表了两篇重要的学术评论，分别由两位会计学著名教授Joel S. Demski和John C. Fellingham撰写。他们对会计学科的学术价值进行了评论，值得会计学专业的学者和学生深思。本篇仅摘录Joel S. Demski教授的结论性评论部分（Conclusion）。读者如有进一步的兴趣，可通过适当途径查找并阅读两篇评论的全文（中央财经大学的学生，可到会计学院资料室复印）。

Is Accounting an Academic Discipline?

Joel S. Demski

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, accounting is not today an academic discipline; it is an ever-narrowing, insular vocational enterprise. But it could and should, in my opinion, be an academic discipline. Even if you disagree with my assessment, you should consider whether the state of academic accounting is, in your view, what it could and should be. The stakes in this game are enormous and serious.

We are talking about responsibility to the academy—not whether accounting belongs in the academy, not about you or me, not about our students, not about our journals. At present, ours is a troubled enterprise. Our research is largely derivative, bifurcated, and far from foundational. Our textbooks are intellectually embarrassing. Our intellectual contribution to the academy has curved asymptotically to nil. We have ceded to regulators the care, feeding, and deepening of our intellectual foundations. Our responsibility is not to prosper in this culture or to do well; it is to do good.

At this point, the only path I see is mutiny. It is time to strike out, to change the game, to ensure accounting has an honorable presence in the academy.

To be sure, this lament is not new to me or even to our generation. What is new is its perfection, the unrelenting vocational approach to all our activities. So who will step forward and put innovation front and center? I don’t know. But I do know two places that will not. How ironic that a subject with emphasis on stewardship should drift so far from its own fundamentals, to abandon stewardship in its own backyard.

Statistically, some young people come to academia for the joy of learning, relatively untainted by the vocational virus. I urge those students to nurture their taste for learning, to follow their joy. That is the path of scholarship, and it is the only one with any possibility of turning us back toward the academy. Don’t play the game. Redefine the game.

Notes: Joel S. Demski is a Professor at the University of Florida. This manuscript is adapted from a speech given at the American Accounting Association Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., August 9, 2006. Thanks to Judy Rayburn for putting this important topic on our agenda. Thanks are also due to John Fellingham and Haijin Lin for their helpful comments and encouragement.