I and C:

1) Automation requires the university accounting programs to take the new technology into consideration.

Evidence statements:

I:

“Most of the universities are aware of this point and are preparing students to be able to face it. Although we don’t have time to apply software system courses, still there are many workshops and trainings, that students are recommended to attend”.

“For a while now, students in good universities are exposed to accounting software that are actually available in the market and usually most universities have in their program a course called “Accounting Information Systems-AIS”.

C:

“The market wants universities to train students on accounting software and this is one of the challenges that the market and the employers usually face with fresh graduates, that they know the technicality but they haven’t used the software yet”.

I and E:

University accounting programs are not yet developed to prepare students for such new world that surpassed the software system and have been taken over by cloud computing.

Evidence statements:

“Most of the markets are not up there yet, so if universities want to prepare Lebanese students and train them on such platforms, students will go out to the market which is still not aware of it, so graduates may be ahead”. This raises the debate on the role of the universities that can be played in reshaping the industry.

Participants of all four categories [I, E, C and S], seem to agree that Lebanese students will not benefit much from the amended accounting programs, because the market is not yet able to respond to these expertise and skills, since it is not equipped for an environment of cloud system and artificial intelligence as in the west. For instance professors think that in general, “students in Lebanon are not getting prepared for it, for two reasons: first, universities lack the expertise to prepare for them, second is that the market is not there yet”.