Man Still Has Place

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31085, 14 June 1966, Page 15

Man Still Has Place

Although there were some people in the United States who believed that electronics processing machines would ultimately replace man in the field of accountancy, Professor R. S. Wasley, of the University of Colorado’s school of business, is not among them.

In an interview in Christchurch he said such data processing machines were just a new type of tool which the accountant had to learn to use.

Professor Wasley arrived in Christchurch on a United States Educational Foundation travel grant to become a visiting Fulbright professor of accounting at the University of Canterbury where he will remain until November.

t His teaching will be concerned mainly with systems of data processing. Professor Wasley will deal with a subject dose to his heart. In collaboration with another specialist friend he has written a book about business data processing systems. “If those people are right who contend that the machine will replace the man, then all I can say is that it will be a case of the accountant not having risen to his opportunities,” he said. With the business world continually changing, through being confronted with many different types of problems, the accountant had to make summaries from the data produced by the processing machines and endeavour to project the facts to the needs of management. The function of the accountant is changing. Formerly he was concerned, financially, with what had happened. Now, with the aid of these useful machines, he can analyse and forecast”

What these data processing machines do in the main is took after much of the repetitive work that accountants formerly had to do themselves. The good accountant will go beyond the machines, said Professor Wasley. At home be is professor and chairman of the accounting division within the university’s school of business. Professor Wasley said about 600 students attended the school. About a third studied accountancy.

There are 14,000 students at the university so you can see our school is not one of the largest on the campus.” he said.

The two-year accountancy course was for junior and senior students. It prepared them both for public and industrial accounting. Professor Wasley said the greater percentage of students studied for public accounting. Professor Wasley is accompanied by his wife and a son. His older son is at college in California and so has remained at home.