In scam season, DU’s course correction

There is a lot to be learnt from accounting frauds devouring giant corporations, and Delhi University is set to give its students a lesson or two in corporate governance, ethics and social responsibility.

There is a lot to be learnt from accounting frauds devouring giant corporations, and Delhi University is set to give its students a lesson or two in corporate governance, ethics and social responsibility.

HT Image

The 2001 Enron scandal that led to the bankruptcy of Enron Corporation, a US energy giant, Satyam Computer scandal that shook the Indian corporate world in early 2009 and the 1991 Maxwell Communications pension scam in the UK will all be part of the curriculum for BCom from this session.

The DU’s commerce department has introduced a course on corporate governance, business ethics and corporate social responsibility.

In the last two decades, more than a dozen big companies have collapsed because of problems in governance, said JP Sharma, head of the department. “While most of the students have heard about these scandals, no one knows what exactly happened and what a company should do in such a situation.”

Big companies falling to audit malpractices was comparatively a recent but a growing phenomenon, he said.

The DU not only wants aspiring auditors to learn about the Ramalinga Rajus of the world but also analyse what went wrong and if it could have been averted.

There will be 15 lectures on governance practices and ethics. “Since most of our students go in for auditing jobs, they should know what goes wrong and how to correct it,” Sharma said.