The University of Birmingham has announced to have become the first Higher Educational establishment to introduce climate change into its BSc Accountancy and Finance degree course.
Led by Professor Ian Thomson, Director of the Lloyds Banking Group Centre for Responsible Business, along with Dr Mayya Konovalova and Dr Madlen Sobkowiak from the Birmingham Business School climate change, which is incorporated into the BSC Accountancy and Financing course, is believed to be the first of its kind in the world.
Professor Thomson commented on the changes to the course: “Greta Thunberg was correct in what she said in Glasgow. It is an undisputable fact that business cannot carry on as normal if we are to effectively fight climate change and reach the government’s target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
“This means that every student studying accountancy and finance should know how to account for climate change.”
Dr Konovalova and Dr Sobkowiak are the two academics responsible for building the new vertically integrated syllabus for the course, and in 2021 won the Birmingham Business School Responsible Business Award for the project.
Dr Mayya Konovalova, who along with Dr Madlen Sobkowiak are responsible for creating this new vertically integrated syllabus for the course, stated: “Students embarking on their journey to becoming accountants can help future-proof their own careers and the organisations they go on to work for thanks to the changes we have brought into the accountancy course.
“Mainstreaming climate change into the syllabus just makes sense. Climate change is a real threat to business resilience, as well as the world at large, and nothing will change if we don’t give our students the tools they need.”
Current first year undergraduate accountancy students are the first cohort to be taught the new course in full, with second and third year students also seeing the introduction of the updated compulsory modules for the remainder of their degree.
Sophie Yates, a current third year undergraduate student in Accounting and Finance, commented: “Learning about carbon accounting showed me how influential organisations could be in encouraging societies’ behavioural change, and the complexity of carbon accounting implementation into organisations.
“This highlighted my naivety towards carbon accounting and made me realise that some elements of sustainability are just too tricky and complicated to put a value on.
“My outlook on climate change has completely changed from being opinions on how we could be sustainable, to looking at the morals of society and responsibility for changing our future globally.”
According to the University of Birmingham, the integration of climate change into the course has become a major selling point for the degree programme.
Dr Sobkowiak added: “The ambition is to continue the roll out and share our practice with other universities across the world. We have already presented our work to universities in Canada, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Australia and Italy, to name a few, through digital international workshops.
“We hope that other universities will replicate what we are doing at the University of Birmingham, so that our new generation of accountants across the globe are prepared with the vital knowledge and skills they need to take climate change into consideration when they go on to start their careers.”
More details about the BSc Accountancy and Finance course is available on the University website.
