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Artificial intelligence (AI) and accounting are becoming intricately interwoven. AI can do everything from using more than several dozen data points to analyze transactions, ensuring minute details and figures are correct, to actually learning and improving its own model as information builds.

Joseph Ugrin, who heads up the department of accounting, said incorporating AI, analytics and other technology-based topics into today’s accounting curriculum is essential. Not only does it prepare students for the modern-day accounting profession, but employers are actively searching for individuals who have a deep understanding of numbers and statistics.

“Employers need people who can work in the middle and intelligently talk about both accounting and statistics,” Ugrin said. “What firms have found is that taking people with system skills and trying to teach them accounting is difficult. So they really desire accounting students with these additional systems skills. The more students have of those skills — like understanding the basics of data analytics, the programming languages that are used — the more they can work in between.”

It’s that shift that has led the business college to include analytics-based courses inside its core curriculum, allowing all students to be exposed to data interpretation. Undergraduate accounting students can expand on that in a core accounting information systems class.

UNI partnered with Rennes Business School, a top ranked business school in Rennes, France to offer a business analytics certificate program in May 2020. While planned as an overseas experience, faculty and students pivoted to offer the program virtually in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“With this, we get to kill two birds with one stone. Students can pick up a skill set that will differentiate them in the marketplace while gaining international exposure. Although not able to physically travel to France, students were able to experience international faculty and educational delivery.”

At the end of a UNI business education, most students will have at least a basic background in business analytics. That will go a long way in their job searches and successes in the workplace.

“There is a market demand for people with this skill set,” Ugrin said. “The profession is migrating toward people that know how to integrate automation in the processes so that they can spend more time analyzing and making decisions. Having this skill set will set them apart.”