The Department of Accounting and Business Information Systems
Accounting teaching at the University of Melbourne started in 1925 when instruction in the Faculty of Commerce commenced. The two men who taught Accountancy I in that year, E.V. (later Sir Edwin) Nixon, and A.A. (later Sir Alex) Fitzgerald, were to become two of the great figures in Australian accounting, through heading large accounting firms, sitting on a range of important governmental enquiries and bodies, providing top-level advice on wartime financial problems and in Fitgeralds's case, chairing the Commonwealth Grants Commission (responsible for allocating Federal income tax to the Australian States), during 1946-60. In a part-time capacity, Fitzgerald was appointed to Melbourne's (and Australia's) first chair in accounting in 1955.
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Faculty academic staff, 1925: Standing, left to right: G.L. Wood, A.A. Fitzgerald, E.V. Nixon, E.C.W. Kelly. Seated: R.B. Lennon, Professor D.B. Copland. |
The majority of the early Bachelor of Commerce students were qualified accountants who took the degree to broaden their knowledge of the business sciences. Thus six of the Faculty's first ten Bachelor of Commerce students were awarded to qualified accountants who included Alex Fitzgerald and his younger brother Garry, who taught part-time from 1928. In the 1930s the student mix changed and, gradually, the Bachelor of Commerce became a gateway into the accounting profession, a phenomenon which has continued to the present day. Since the 1970s, the majority of Commerce graduates have included accounting majors in their degrees and qualified for entry into the professional programs of CPA Australia and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia.
Alex Fitzgerald's immediate professorial successors, Louis Goldberg and Robert Nicol, were responsible for curriculum initiatives, particularly the introduction of business information systems and corporate finance. In the 1990s Professor Peter Brownell created the impetus which has gained the department international recognition for the quality of its staff research, some of which is carried out in conjunction with major corporations and professional bodies.
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