Masters in Acounting: an analysis according to human capital theory

Abstract

The objective of this study is to trace the Master's degree profile of leaving the Multiinstitucional and Inter-regional Program for the Master's degree in Accounting Sciences of the UnB/UFPB/UFPE/UFRN universities, investigating the influences of that diploma on his profile. The theoretical framework of the study is based on the Human Capital Theory. The methodology is characterized as exploratory-descriptive leaning toward the inductive method, using the techniques of bibliographical and documental research, including questionnaires.A questionnaire was given to 96 students leaving this program, between July 01 and August 31, 2008, representing 70,07% of the investigated population. To do the descriptive and statistical analysis of the data, the softwares Excel and SPSS were used. From the results, it was found that, for the most part, the Masters are men (65,63%), they live in one of the states/city that make up the Program (80,21%), are approximately 39 years old and are married (64,58%). Before the Master's degree, 62,50% of them gave classes in some IES and, after his conclusion, this number increased for 79,17%. This shows the influence of Master's degree in a new professional orientation of this group, in that a significant number of those professionals then started to act in the academic arena, which confirms the precepts of the Human Capital Theory, because we can observe the influence of that education on the employability and on the income of these professionals.