Transforming Accountancy Training in Kosovo

Additional partners: GateWay Community College, CARANA Corporation, the Society of Certified Accountants and Auditors of Kosovo (SCAAK).

By collaborating to transform accountancy training at the University of Pristina, this partnership between Arizona State University and the University of Pristina is helping to develop a market economy in Kosovo, one of the world’s newest independent countries. Together, they have constructed a modern accountancy undergraduate degree program and are now training the next generation of accounting instructors to be ready and able to deliver the new curriculum.

To ensure that the University of Pristina's accountancy graduates meet the standard, the partners have developed—in close collaboration with the Society of Certified Accountants and Auditors of Kosovo—a state-of-the-art, three-year baccalaureate accountancy program in the University of Pristina's new Department of Accountancy. The program admitted 65 students in its first year, 110 in its second, and expects to admit 150 in 2012.

In addition, five Kosovar scholars who graduated from Arizona' State's Master of Accountancy program have translated six seminal accounting textbooks from English into Albanian. Two of the five returning scholars are now teaching part-time in the University of Pristina's new accountancy program and four of the five scholars have obtained full-time lecturer positions at the new University of Prizren. Kosovo’s Ministry of Education recognized talent of the Arizona State-trained scholars and recruited them for the new university, which opened its doors in October 2010.