Introduction

I took Managerial Accounting from Ahmad Hosseini in Winter 2008, my second quarter in the MBA program. This was the first quarter that introductory managerial accounting was taught as a separate course to graduate students. Before this, ACTG 301 combined financial and managerial accounting.

Instructor Profile

Professor Hosseini has an extensive international academic career in accounting that includes rising to Dean of Sonoma State University’s business school then going to Africa as Founding Dean of the American University of Nigeria’s business school. At Santa Clara he runs the Certificate in Advanced Accounting Proficiency program in addition to lecturing.

This course covers the basic concepts of Managerial Accounting, and Professor Hosseini kept the class focused in this content.

Classroom Experience

The majority of each class was a prepared lecture. These lectures were based on PowerPoint slides provided by the textbook publisher, but they had been edited somewhat by Professor Hosseini, who also added on some other examples.

Before each homework assignment was due, Professor Hosseini walked through solutions to practice problems which were generally very similar to the homework problems. These were presented on the computer display and were pretty easy to follow.

Before the first day of class, Professor Hosseini organized the class into 9 groups of 4 or 5 people by order of last name. These were teams who did two brief class presentations during the course (more on this below).

There was not much Q&A or student interaction during the class except during the team presentations. I think this was mainly Professor Hosseini’s style, as he wanted to fit a lot of the core content into the course and already had enough structured presentation material to fill each course. Professor Hosseini did call on students to answer questions during the class, but there wasn’t much open-ended discussion or exploration of other aspects of accounting.

Coursework, exams, and grades

The almost-weekly homework assignments took a bit of time, but they were not too hard because of the sample problems that were covered in class. Many students, including me, spent a lot of time lining up tables properly in Excel. The wiser students did the homeworks using pencil and paper, which helped them prepare similar tables during the exams under time pressure.

Two mid-terms and a final exam made up the majority of the class grade. Individual problems were not very hard, but all three exams presented a time crunch for most students. Each exam had a lot of low-credit multiple choice questions. To me, some of these questions were easy but others took as much time as the non-multiple-choice problems.

Each team prepared two 15-minute presentations for homework problems that were somewhat open-ended and subject to interpretation and opinions. These could generally be prepared with one or two in-person meetings the week before, and a little coordination over e-mail. These were good learning experiences for me, and the Q&A sessions between other students and the presenting teams were also useful.

What I learned

I learned the core concepts of managerial accounting. Not having any experience with any kind of manufacturing company, I got some initial insight into the financial and planning considerations faced by a company with a multiple stage production system.

Criticisms

Several students in my section were unhappy with Professor Hosseini’s lecture style. I beleive this was due to the speed of his lecture and the fact that he was not very interactive with students during the class. There might be other reasons that I misunderstood.

As an MBA student who is probably never going to work directly an accounting or finance, I would have preferred a class experience that tought me more about the practical impact of accounting principles on decisions faced by managers throughout a company (something I got a lot of insight into from Paisley’s Financial Accounting course). In other words, I think I wanted to learn how to work with managerial accountants rather than how to be a managerial accountant.

The course syllabus was revised several times during the quarter, and from the start it was not very clear exactly what day each homework set was due until a class or two beforehand. This was distracting, but because it was the first quarter ACTG 302 was ever taught I expect this will not be as much of a problem in the future.

Recommendation

If you are considering a professional or academic career in accounting, you should get to know Professor Hosseini. It is clear that he has a tremendous amount of knowledge and contacts about the accounting and business worlds that we barely touched on during this class. I suspect that he would also be a good instructor to take an advanced accounting course from.

For an MBA student who is looking at ACTG 302 as a required course, you can expect to learn the fundamentals in this course with a predictable class structure and amount of work required.

Trailer

This article was first written in 2008 by Dylan Salisbury for dylansalisbury.com. All rights reserved. I added this paragraph because spam blog sites pick up copies of my blog posts.

For a list of course reviews and a disclaimer, visit my Course Reviews page.

Introduction

I took Financial Accounting from Chris Paisley in Fall 2007, my first quarter in the MBA program. This was the first quarter that financial and managerial accounting were taught in separate introductory courses to evening MBA students. Previously a single course covered both subjects.

Instructor Profile

For someone hoping as an MBA student will to learn the fundamentals of financial accounting along with a understanding of how the concepts impact board room decisions, there could hardly be a better instructor than Paisley. Beyond his former role as CFO of 3COM, he continues to serve on boards of private and public companies, including chairing audit committees. He teaches the fundamentals of accounting to undergrads, graduate students, and corporate executives.

Classroom experience

Each class followed a simple lecture format. Lecture outlines were available beforehand on ERES, and also displayed on overhead projector during the lecture.

During the first class, Paisley distributed the Brocade 10-K and presented an overview of the document. He referred back to specific parts during many lectures.

Paisley’s lectures covered the fundamentals principles and rules of U.S. financial accounting while tying them to Brocade’s filings and relevant stories of real-world situations he has experienced.

Paisley had a few particular points where his opinion differed from the textbook. If you take his class you will learn which technique for “managing earnings” is frowned upon by the text but considered completely legitimate by this experienced CFO. He was very clear that these opinions were part of the course content, and they were mentioned in his lecture notes and reflected in the exams as well.

Several classes ran late, including one that was interrupted by a medium-intensity earthquake! After each midterm, sessions were scheduled after regular class time to review each problem.

Two classes were devoted to presentations of the group projects.

Coursework, exams, and grades

Course grade consisted of two midterms, a final exam, and a group project.

Each exam consisted of true/false questions and a number of accounting problems. Many students felt that the true/false questions were trickier than they expected – some depended on carefully evaluating details of the sentence.

The group project involved digging into the public filings and earnings calls of a public company and producing a powerpoint slide with summaries and recommendations for investing in or lending to the chosen company.

Homework problems were assigned but not collected. Paisley monitored the ERES discussion board for questions about homework and responded promptly.

What I learned

I definitely learned the fundamental principles and rules of accounting and I got a sense for how they play out when company leaders make decisions and approve financial statements. The group presentations gave me some interesting insight into the different practices followed by some companies in particular industries.

Criticisms

Paisley’s lecture format and style is not well suited to a student who is falling behind. This is because the content moves quickly and he does not use alternative presentation styles to illustrate a concept that some students don’t “get” the first time. That being said, the core concepts of financial accounting are fairly standard and many resources are available to students who need extra explanation and examples, including free tutoring at SCU.

Recommendation

If you consider yourself to be a smart student and you see yourself in the board room someday, go out of your way to take this course from Paisley. If you have reason to think accounting may be a difficult subject for you or if this course description sounds intimidating, there may be another instructor with a style that works better for you. Like many graduate courses, you will need to do ungraded homework with discipline in order to keep up with the course.

Many students will benefit from recording the lectures and having them available for reference when studying for the exams.

Trailer

This article was first written in 2008 by Dylan Salisbury for dylansalisbury.com. All rights reserved. I added this paragraph because spam blog sites pick up copies of my blog posts.

For a list of course reviews and a disclaimer, visit my Course Reviews page.