HATTIESBURG -- It has been four years since the collapse of the energy company Enron. This week, two of the company’s former top officials went on trial for their roles in the scandal.  

The lessons learned in the wake of Enron and other corporate scandals are both costly for business operations and instructive for future business students, according to Dr. Marvin Albin, associate professor of accounting in the College of Business at Southern Miss.

Albin says that there is now a greater emphasis on internal controls and compliance in corporate America. “The whole regulatory climate has changed and forced corporations to do things that they’ve done in name only. They are spending enormous amounts of money to comply with standards that have been in place a long time,” said Albin.

Another contributing factor is the existence of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002.

On the importance of teaching these lessons to students, Albin says, “We’ve always taught ethics as one of our major components, and now we’re putting more emphasis on adhering to standards. In accounting, there are standards for everything you do. What led to Arthur Andersen’s and Enron’s demise is that they thought they had a better way. We are able to point to these fraud cases and show what happens when you don’t.”

Albin is a certified public accountant and has been an accounting professor for 25 years. A member of the AICPA, he has developed and taught many continuing professional education seminars on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and its components.