EY Academic Resource Center

Robust cybersecurity involves implementing controls that are based on three key foundations: people, processes and technology. This approach helps organizations defend themselves from both highly organized attacks and common internal threats, such as accidental breaches and human error. Today’s cyber risk environment is very dynamic. Beyond implanting these controls, it is also critical that organizations seek to secure the trust of investors and other stakeholders through robust cybersecurity governance and disclosures. We offer curriculum content that provides students with exposure to this important topic.

Many businesses today are now moving from a financially driven strategy to one that is guided by purpose and focused on a broader definition of value creation for a broader array of stakeholders for the long term. We offer a curriculum module that can expose this topic to business students at an introductory level. The content can help students develop a better understanding of the market conditions driving a focus on long-term value, learn the definition of long-term value and its connection to the increasing importance of intangible value, as well as understand the challenges and opportunities with developing the measurement and reporting of long-term value and sustainability and the key role of accountants in this process. Beyond this curriculum module, we also offer additional presentation and video resources on this important and evolving topic.

In preparing to enter today’s workforce, students need to keep up with new interviewing techniques to put their best self forward to successfully launch their career. This curriculum is focused on developing a student’s abilities with:

• Virtual interviewing
• Case interviewing

Diversity, equity and inclusiveness are not “nice to haves.” They are business imperatives. Diverse perspectives, combined with an equitable and inclusive culture, drive better decision-making, stimulate innovation, increase organizational agility and strengthen resilience to disruption. 

We offer a faculty guide to help foster an inclusive classroom in a virtual environment and EY’s latest thinking on this important topic.

The role of the auditor continues to evolve, driven by efforts to enhance audit quality, expand assurance over nonfinancial information, operate in a more regulated environment and embrace innovation. Our curriculum seeks to keep students educated on the importance of the assurance function within the capital markets and help them understand and embrace the expectations of auditors in the business world, despite the increase in the demands on the profession. We also want students to possess the leading-edge skills required by assurance professionals to navigate through a global business world with more complexities, bigger data, changing risks, new technologies and other evolving traits.

Many of our curriculum topics include content that can be integrated into an audit course. These include the innovation mindset; the analytics mindset; auditing fair value measures; sustainability reporting audit considerations; and the professional judgment framework, with this module including many cases that focus on audit judgments.

Beyond these topics, additional audit content is available, including:

• Information Technology General Controls (ITGC) — We offer six modules covering designing tests of internal controls, ITGC basics, evaluation of ITGCs and the audit response to ineffective ITGCs.  The content includes presentations, lecture notes, exercises, comprehensive examples, an informational video and a virtual experience.  
• Information produced by the entity (IPE) — We offer one module that helps students gain awareness about what IPE is, understand the flow of IPE from a transaction process or IT process along with the associated audit risks, and, finally, what audit procedures can address these risks.
• Anatomy of a fraud — This includes lecture notes, discussion exercises and video footage from an interview with David Myers, Controller, about the WorldCom fraud. It offers an opportunity for students to think critically about the causes of fraud and their personal ethical responsibilities.

Technology represents the future direction of tax, whether it’s because of the digitization of tax globally or the disruption being caused by both regulators and the market combined. As the tax profession continues to evolve, the skill sets needed are becoming increasingly diverse. Tax professionals need to be strongly versed in tax technical knowledge, have exceptional business acumen and project management skills, and also be adept with technology. Our curriculum seeks to assist students with developing these diverse skills.

We offer tax curriculum content within the following topics:

• Analytics mindset
• Professional judgment framework
• We also offer presentation and other supplementary materials from the EY Tax Educators Symposium that feature topics of current interest to the profession.

Professional judgment skills have never been more important considering this environment of increasing risk and complexity. This curriculum helps provide students with an understanding of common biases that can interfere with their ability to make a strong professional judgment. Students are also provided with a framework that allows them to use a process to address appropriate considerations to make professional judgments, which can be easily applied to accounting and auditing scenarios. We offer cases for making judgments in the following areas: allowance for doubtful accounts; inventory lower of cost or market; property, plant and equipment impairment; intangibles useful life determination; debt refinancing: modification or extinguishment; environmental obligations; goodwill impairment (qualitative assessment); accounting for income taxes valuation allowance; fraud risk assessment; and loss contingency for asset expropriation.

We provide modules on the following financial accounting topics:

• Revenue recognition
• Leases
• Fair value
• Financial instruments: classification and measurement