Course Philosophy

Accounting 345 is being redesigned to provide UIC accounting graduates taking at least one tax course the necessary background, knowledge, skill set, and research experience to prepare them for work in public or private accounting in the corporate world.  The course revision is based on suggestions by the Accounting Education Change Commission (AECC).  The AECC believes that successful accounting graduates of the future have unique capabilities that set them apart from past accounting graduates.  The AECC has very strong feelings concerning the course content and their relation to the professional exams.  The new course will conform to the AECC's recommendations.

(AECC statement and recommendation).

Rules for Success in Accounting 345

1. Read all material before the class period the material is to be presented. One of the simplest rules to follow, yet the one least observed. Your decision to read should be based on your concern about keeping up in the class not the weight of your text book. I do not require that the textbook be brought to class but I do require that it be read.
2. Be prepared to discuss the assigned material on the day indicated for discussion. I will cold call members of the class and I expect you to be prepared to answer. Sometimes you will be right and sometimes you will be wrong. If I indicate you are incorrect it has nothing to do with you it has to do with correcting the class's perception of what the correct answer is. Be prepared to be wrong; everyone is and they get over it otherwise they become a hermit living in a cabin on top of a mountain in a place where everyone is correct and all children are above average.
3. Turn in assignments on time and in the proper format. Your supervisors and clients expect this and much more; I only expect that you follow instructions and be on time.
4. Do well on all exams. This doesn't mean you have to have the top score but failure to at least obtain the mean on more than one assignment will have a definite affect on the course outcome. There is no magic to good grades only work effort.
5. Study your text, class notes, and suggested problems; not the solutions to suggested problems. Studying the suggested solutions is like studying Spanish to take your Italian exam. They are related but there are enough differences to make any outcome less than you might desire.
6. Study your friend's photocopy of last semester's exams  but don't let it give you brain lock. Recent experience shows that when copies not generally available were used as the primary study tool the brain lock factor affected nearly 90 percent of the class causing catastrophic failure on the final exam. Do not let this happen to you.
7. Study with someone else in the class if you are having trouble. That doesn't mean that you may turn in collaborative work when you find an exceptional partner. It means that the individual might provide you insights to the material that you could not achieve while in the classroom.
8. Remember that you get as much out of the course as you put in. If you don't want much then don't expect much but certainly don't expect additional efforts by me or the remainder of the class to provide substitute input effort when your outcomes do not coincide with your inputs. There is an old philosophy that everyone starts the class with an A and those who still have it in the end managed to work hard enough to keep. Alternatively one could say that everyone is failing the class on the first day and managed to improve their grade to an A by the end. If you start with an A or start with a failing grade it doesn't matter, it is the effort the you provide that determines the final outcome.
9. Passive class members never do well and are almost always  dissatisfied with the final result.
10. Study.
11. Review and go to class.
12. Study.
13. Review and go to class.
14. Study.
15. Review and go to class.
16. Study.