Teaching Transversal Competences in the Area of Accounting: Fact or Fiction?

A high percentage of graduates in Economics and Business start a professional career in jobs related to accounting, auditing or finance. These areas have been characterized in recent decades by a large international as well as numerous financial scandals due to fraud and accounting manipulations. In Higher Education is necessary to ensure that key transferable skills are developed in the accounting subjects. The case method has been applied, by analyzing the accounting subjects of a Business Degree. The elements of the case are: syllabus analysis, faculty’s opinion and actual practice and video recording of seminars. A detailed analysis shows that the transversal competences that are currently being taught and evaluated are oral communication skills and to a lesser degree written communication skills and teamwork. The ethical and social responsibility of the company is discussed tangentially through case studies in one compulsory subject. In this work we show in which areas there can be inconsistencies in the development and evaluation of transversals skills in higher education and specifically in the accounting area.