Should Financial Derivatives Courses Be Included in Accounting Program Curricula?
Dr. Patrick R. Murphy, Dr. Passard C. Dean, Mr. Sean Gibbons, Ms. Tayhana Taylor

Abstract
Financial derivatives continue to grow as a tool by corporations to generate profits and manage risk. This paper outlines the most popular instruments used by these companies and notes the complexity that has been found in researching them. It is evident that financial derivatives come with a great amount of risk and reward and need accountants educated in the accounting for them. The paper sought to determine whether colleges and universities are preparing accounting graduates to account for financial derivatives. Academic institutions unfortunately appear to be lacking in their coverage of this relevant topic in their accounting program curricula. An analysis of the top 100 schools revealed that only a small percent of these schools includes financial derivatives in their required accounting program course work. On the contrary the results reveal that a significant percentage of these same schools include the coverage of financial derivatives in their finance course work.

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