Why Accounting Practitioners and Educators Would Not Major in Accounting Again

Accounting Education: Charting the Course through a Perilous Future by W. Steve Albrecht and Robert J. Sack
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CHAPTER 4
Why Accounting Practitioners
and Educators Would Not
Major in Accounting Again
Sales experts long ago concluded that “word of mouth” and “personal testimonials” are the best
types of advertising. The Taylor Group1 found this to be true when they asked high school and
college students what they intended to study in college. Their study found that students were more
likely to major in accounting if they knew someone, such as a friend or relative, who was an
accountant. But what would happen if those who are accountants—either accounting educators or
practitioners—quit advocating accounting as a career and major and instead recommended that other
majors and careers were more attractive? It appears from our research that we are about to find out.
Although nearly 100 percent of accounting educators and 79 percent of accounting practitioners who
responded to our surveys had undergraduate degrees in accounting, most of them stated that they
would not get an accounting degree if completing their education over again. When asked “If you
could prepare for your professional career by starting college over again today, which of the follow-
ing would you be most likely to do?” the responses were as follows:
% of Educators
% of Practitioners
Type of Degree
Who Would
Who Would
Earn a bachelor’s degree in something other than
accounting and then stop
0.0
7.8
Earn a bachelor’s degree in accounting, then stop
4.3
6.4
Earn a Master’s of Business Administration (M.B.A.)
degree
37.7
36.4
Earn a Master’s of Accountancy degree
31.5
5.9
Earn a Master’s of Information Systems degree
17.9
21.3
Earn a master’s degree in something else
5.4
6.4
Earn a Ph.D.
1.6
4.4
Earn a J.D. (law degree)
1.6
11.4
These results are frightening, especially considering the fact that we are moving quickly toward
a universal application of the rule requiring 150 hours to practice as a CPA, and that the most popular
educational model used to prepare CPA candidates is a Master’s of Accountancy degree. At the
same time we are recommending that students get a Master’s of Accountancy degree (M.Acc.), only
5.9 percent of practicing accountants would get a M.Acc. if they were starting their education over
Back to text
1
The AICPA Topline Report concluded that “Students who have friends and family who are accountants are much more
knowledgeable regarding accounting and, correspondingly, much more likely to consider accounting as a career.”

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34
Accounting Education: Charting the Course through a Perilous Future
again. Even more amazing is that the largest proportion of accounting faculty members feels the
same way. It is telling that six times as many practicing accountants would get an M.B.A. as would
an M.Acc., over three times as many practitioners would get a Master’s of Information Systems
degree as would get an M.Acc., and nearly twice as many practitioners would get a law degree
instead of an M.Acc. Together, only 12.3 percent (6.4% + 5.9%) of practitioners would get either an
undergraduate or graduate degree in accounting.2 This decrease in the perceived value of accounting
degrees by practitioners is captured in the following quotes:
We asked a financial executive what advice he would give to a student who wanted to emulate his
career. We asked him if he would recommend a M.Acc. degree. He said, “No, I think it had better
be broad. Students should be studying other courses and not just taking as many accounting
courses as possible. If they’re going to do that, they should plan to be one of the enforcers. They
should plan on working for the SEC and trying to be one of their generals. And, if I was going to
counsel someone with regard to career, I would urge them to get some operations experience
along the way.” —Interviewee
My job right now is no longer putting numbers together. I do more analysis. My finance skills and
my M.B.A. come into play a lot more than my CPA skills. —Participant, CPA Vision Focus Group
I have been on the advisory board of XYZ University…and we have been asking ourselves, “What
are the needs of today’s accountants?” The IT world is meshing very closely with the accounting
world, in practice, and so we are creating a new course of study that will combine accounting and
information technology into one unique major….In my mind, that’s the way to go. —Interviewee
I always felt like accounting people were a part of it [central role in the company]. Now I see us
moving away from that. The information systems department was smaller than ours when I started.
Now their department is way bigger than ours, and they’re the trainers. My mentor wants me to get
a CMA, but I want to learn about information systems. —Participant, CPA Vision Focus Group
The preference for the M.B.A. degree over a Master’s of Accountancy degree is motivated both
by the nature of the degree and the degree title. When we asked whether “A Master’s of Business
Administration (M.B.A.) degree title is more valuable than a Master’s of Accountancy (M.Acc.)
degree title for accounting graduates,” 49.0 percent of accounting educators stated that they either
somewhat or strongly agreed, while only 32.4 percent of accounting educators responded that they
either somewhat or strongly disagreed. In contrast, 64.5 percent of accounting practitioners either
somewhat or strongly agreed with the statement that the M.B.A. title is more valuable, while only
15.3 percent of respondents either somewhat or strongly disagreed.
Having accounting practitioners and educators state that they would prefer other degrees to
accounting degrees is similar to the owner of a BMW or, worse yet, a BMW salesperson telling her
children and friends that if she had the buying decision to do over again, she would purchase a
different kind of car next time around. If those who practice and teach accounting cannot provide
positive testimonials about the value of accounting degrees, then who can?
The responses to our survey questions reveal that accounting practitioners view accounting
education and accounting degrees less positively than do accounting educators. This perceived
difference in the value of accounting degrees between practitioners and educators may be part of the
problem. As educators, we can argue that practitioners really do not understand all the good things
we are doing, but that protest quickly becomes hollow when we understand the monumental input
Back to text
2
We did not ask respondents how many would get various combinations of degrees such as undergraduate accounting and
Master’s of Business Administration degrees. Such combinations could increase the demand for undergraduate account-
ing degrees. In fact, the Taylor Group found that while very few students rank having a CPA as attractive, about half
found having both a CPA and M.B.A. to be attractive.

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Chapter 4—Why Accounting Practitioners and Educators Would Not Major in Accounting Again
35
and output problems we are facing. While it may be difficult for us to admit that our programs are off
the mark, the decreasing demand for our programs certainly supports the practitioner viewpoint. If
we cannot convince ourselves to believe the opinions expressed by critics, we must be convinced by
the empirical evidence regarding the decrease in student demand for our educational programs.
Why Accounting Practitioners and Educators
Would Not Major in Accounting Again
While the evidence that accounting practitioners and educators view other degrees as more
attractive than accounting degrees is frightening, the follow-up question “Why do they feel that
way?” is a more useful inquiry. It takes significant pain for accounting graduates to admit that
something they worked so hard for has less value than other alternatives today. It is probably more
difficult for educators to admit that their own preferences may not have been right. We cannot take
proactive steps to fix the problem until we know what is causing these perceptions. While empirical
evidence rarely answers the question “Why,” we gained valuable insights into their reasons from our
personal interviews, background readings, and focus group meetings.
Some of the reasons accounting practitioners and educators would not major in accounting
today are very closely related to the reasons why students do not choose accounting as a major (as
were discussed in Chapter 3). While all of those reasons apply here as well, there is a big difference
between “perceptions of prospective accounting students” and “perceptions of people who already
have accounting degrees.” We can argue that prospective students suffer from misinformation or a
lack of information and really do not understand the excitement provided by accounting education
and accounting careers. However, those “misinformation” arguments do not work with practicing
accountants and accounting educators. It is those who have the most knowledge about accounting
degrees and careers—current accountants who majored in accounting—that we are addressing here.
If anyone has an accurate picture of the value of an accounting degree, they do. There appear to be
two major reasons why knowledgeable accounting educators and practitioners would not major in
accounting again. One reason has to do with the nature of accounting education and one has to do
with the nature of accounting work as stated here:
1. The business world has changed dramatically, while accounting education has not. Accounting
education is perceived as being too narrow and backward-looking and too costly for the
benefits received.
2. The idea of a career in accounting has lost favor because of technological and competitive
changes. Business people who want an interesting and rewarding career are looking elsewhere.
The business world has changed dramatically, while accounting education has not.
Accounting education is perceived as being too narrow and backward-looking and too
costly for the benefits received.
None of us would assert that the business world is the same as it was 15 years ago. The difficulty
is in knowing how it has changed and how we should react to those changes. The following three
quotes are typical of what we heard from practicing accountants and educators about the changes
taking place.
The world economy is entering a new and highly complex era. Technology is becoming an ever-
increasing driver of strategy and decision making. More and more, companies and individuals
must compete in a global marketplace. At the same time, businesses and individuals are inundated
with data and information from a variety of sources. Success in this environment is increasingly
dependent on the strategic management and use of knowledge to understand and analyze this flood
of information, and to create and realize value. Mastering knowledge in today’s global market-
place requires an increasing emphasis on the understanding of a broad range of business compe-
tencies. XYZ Discussion Draft, —AICPA (emphasis added)

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36
Accounting Education: Charting the Course through a Perilous Future
Now everybody wants and expects more. What they’re looking for is for our people to have better
business minds, to be able to think broader, to be more innovative, to share best practices and, if
they are not getting that from their service providers, I think they’re concerned because in today’s
business, every small edge counts. And, the stakes are so big for them that they’ve raised the bar
very, very high for us. —Participant, New York Focus Group
We’ve gone from only performing some narrow roles that people think they understand as being
accounting roles to being many other roles that outsiders aren’t really clear whether it’s the
accountant who does it or not. And with it, with the advances in technology and so forth, have
come even greater needs for accountants to do more and more, but also greater needs for all of us
as stakeholders, to get the message out that today there is a different definition of what an
accountant is. —Participant, New York Focus Group
Robert Elliott, KPMG partner and current chairman of the AICPA, speaks often about the value
that accountants can and should provide. He identifies five stages of the “value chain” of informa-
tion. The first stage is recording business events. The second stage is summarizing recorded events
into usable data. The third stage is manipulating the data to provide useful information. The fourth
stage is converting the information to knowledge that is helpful to decision makers. The fifth and
final stage is using the knowledge to make value-added decisions. He uses the following diagram to
illustrate this value chain:
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4
Stage 5
Business
Data
Information
Knowledge
Decisions
Events
This five-stage breakdown is a helpful analysis of the information process. However, the frightening
part of Mr. Elliott’s analysis is his judgment as to what the segments of the value chain are worth in
today’s world. Because of the impact of technology, he believes that:
• Stage 1 activity is now worth no more than $10 per hour
• Stage 2 activity is now worth no more than $30 per hour
• Stage 3 activity is now worth $100 per hour
• Stage 4 activity is now worth $300 per hour
• Stage 5 activity is now worth $1,000 per hour
In discussing this value chain, Mr. Elliott urges the practice community to focus on upper-end
services, and he urges us to prepare our students so they aim toward that goal as well. Historically,
accounting education has prepared students to perform stage 1- and stage 2-type work. We spend
significant amounts of time teaching recording and summarizing functions, and how to prepare
financial statements. Think about the typical curricula:
•
The first accounting course is usually a prep course in financial accounting for the intermediate,
which covers the nature of debits and credits and how to prepare financial statements. The second
course in management accounting is usually a prep course for cost accounting.
•
The intermediate accounting and cost accounting courses focus students on tracking costs and the
preparation of financial reports on the basis of those costs. The orientation is usually rule-based
and requires significant amounts of memorization.
•
The advanced courses are often focused on more detail in tax, auditing, financial, and cost
accounting.
One senior faculty member, commenting on the idea of an information value chain, said this:
Accounting has traditionally been taught moving up the value chain, starting at the recording
process. It gives students a bitter taste for accounting and attracts a narrow student. My observation,

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Chapter 4—Why Accounting Practitioners and Educators Would Not Major in Accounting Again
37
based on my work in the AAA and on accreditation committees, is that the vast majority of
academe hasn’t bought into the idea of teaching toward the top of the value chain, and accounting
continues to be taught from bottom up. —Participant, Ross Institute Roundtable
If technology has replaced the needs and minimized the rewards of performing stage 1 and
stage 2 work, has not technology also eliminated the need to teach students how to perform detailed
work at these early stages? Consider the following quotes:
The role of management accountants is very different in 1999. Growing numbers of management
accountants spend the bulk of their time as internal consultants or business analysts within their
companies. Technological advances have liberated them from the mechanical aspects of accounting.
They spend less time preparing standardized reports and more time analyzing and interpreting
information. Many have moved from the isolation of accounting departments to be physically posi-
tioned in operating departments with which they work. Management accountants work on cross-
functional teams, have extensive face-to-face communications with people throughout their organi-
zations, and are actively involved in decision making. —IMA, Counting More, Counting Less
It’s a different way of thinking today—it’s a futuristic thinking, rather than a historical thinking.
Twenty years ago, cost accounting was after-the-fact keeping track of what something cost to make
and today it’s out working with suppliers trying to get a cost down so that your company can buy
the product cheaper. The whole perspective has changed. It’s futuristic. That’s where the account-
ing information has value—not in the historical. —Participant, Los Angeles Focus Group
Students need to know how to analyze. An accounting student needs to know that there are
technical rules and regulations. He or she doesn’t need to be able to tell me what FAS 124 is. I
don’t even know what FAS 124 is, but I if I need to know it, I know where to get it. They need to
know that there’s a body of rules and regulations that govern the practice of accounting, both
within business and within the profession. They need to understand financial statements. They
need to understand how to read them and they need to understand what is in them. —Participant,
Chicago Focus Group
While the world has changed dramatically, there are strong feelings that accounting education
has not kept up. In our survey we asked, “How well is accounting education today meeting the needs
and expectations of accounting professionals?” The response, with 4 representing “very well,” was
2.69 from both faculty and practice respondents. But others have been more outspokenly critical, as
these quotes demonstrate:
Although school and faulty competencies have advanced, the gap between practice and academic
research and teaching has widened. The lack of business interaction, changing technologies,
aging faculty, and shortage of incentives to change have inhibited faculty initiative for change that
is necessary to keep pace with a rapidly changing environment….The pace of change in the
external environment is too high for some faculty and many are not investing in lifelong learning
for themselves. Often they rely too much on old methods and, lacking direct interaction with
industry, generate little cutting-edge research that makes a difference to industry. —AACSB
Leadership Report
CEOs have come to see accountants as being 90% concerned with external financial reporting—
and the audits thereof. And neither of those activities has anything to do with the way managers
run the business. From the standpoint of the CEO, the accounting profession (and accounting
education) has been marginalized. Today’s successful CFO grew up in a different milieu than the
typical accountant. Today’s CFO will have been an analyst or a systems person. They understand
the elements of the business, but they also understand how management peers make decisions, and
the information they need to make those decisions—with forward-looking information. Accoun-
tants have lost sight of who their customers are and so have lost their relevance. It is relatively
easy to hire people who can be charged with the responsibility for financial reporting. They can do
their job and be ignored. —Interviewee

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38
Accounting Education: Charting the Course through a Perilous Future
The most critical work activities for management accountants today are strategic planning and
process improvement; neither is taught in accounting curricula. Accounting educators must be
sure that their students acquire the necessary KSAs to perform these and other key work activities.
To better meet the needs of their students and corporate customers, college and university ac-
counting educators should obtain a better understanding of the work performed in modern corpo-
rations. —IMA, Counting More, Counting Less
The Vision Project has huge implications for education. A distinction should be made between the
traditional education to enter the profession and nontraditional skills. On the traditional side,
there are a number of positive curriculum changes at a number of institutions. However, many
schools still train people only to prepare and audit financial statements. While this is a core
service of the profession, the education is not broad enough to equip graduates to take advantage
of all of the opportunities the Vision Project identified. “Steering A Course for the Future,”
—Interview with Robert Elliott, as he assumed the chairmanship of the AICPA.
A major firm recruiter provided a more positive perspective, but with a serious caveat:
From my perspective there has been a lot of positive change in education. As we look at communi-
cation skills and technology skills, and so on, students are far better prepared to be in today’s
business climate than they were five or ten years ago. So the change has been terrific, quite
honestly. I think the message is that we’d like to see those changes be more pervasive and that
there’s an opportunity to do even more. Actually, it’s critical that we do more if our students are
going to be competitive, the way that the business world is going. It is essential that we keep the
foot on the accelerator with regard to change. —Participant, New York Focus Group
As the work of accountants has changed, other, often shorter and less difficult, majors are
preparing students to work as “accountants.” With technology now performing the recording and
summarizing functions, there is no significant market or competitive advantage to pursuing a rigor-
ous, rule-based curricula. One Big 5 recruiter summarized this problem well.
The other [nonaccounting] majors that are coming out of school today are bringing to bear the
things that accountants have traditionally done in the past. I think what you’re seeing now is a
difficulty in differentiating majors coming out of school—a finance major from an accountant, for
example. As a result, it continues to be a challenge for us as a firm as to what we are looking for in
the qualities of graduates and the approach we take when looking for people to join our organiza-
tion. —Participant, New York Focus Group
We can summarize this problem by using the following Venn diagram.
Relevant
M.B.A., Finance,
Accounting Major
Education
and Information Systems
Knowledge, Skills, and
Finance,
Abilities (KSAs) Needed
Information Systems,
Accounting
to Practice "Accounting"
Strategy, Computer
Education
in the Rapidly Changing
Science, and Other
Business World
Popular Majors
Pace of Change
Change
in Business World

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Chapter 4—Why Accounting Practitioners and Educators Would Not Major in Accounting Again
39
This diagram illustrates the two changes that are occurring and causing practitioners and educa-
tors to choose not to major in accounting today: (1) accounting education is not changing fast enough
to keep up with changes in the business world, and (2) as the business world changes, increasingly
more of the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) needed to do what “accountants” do are being
taught by other, often lower cost, disciplines. Students studying finance and information systems, for
example, can get a four-year degree that some would argue is less rigorous than an accounting degree
and be well prepared to perform many of the services that are now being performed by professional
service firms and corporate accountants.
To understand the attractiveness of related majors, we asked our survey respondents to rank the
attractiveness of various business majors and to think about how the accounting major might be
changed to make it more attractive. Their responses to those questions bear out their dislike for the
accounting major as it has been traditionally taught.
Faculty
Faculty
Practitioners
Practitioners
Who
Who
Who
Who
Strongly
Agreed
Strongly
Agreed
Disagreed or
or Strongly
Disagreed or
or Strongly
Question Asked
Disagreed
Agreed
Disagreed
Agreed
Accounting is a more attractive college
major than finance
35.7%
38.6%
30.0%
49.5%
Accounting is a more attractive college
major than information systems
55.2
22.8
49.7
31.1
Accounting and information systems
should be combined into one
college major
25.0
57.5
34.7
52.0
Accounting and finance should be
combined into one college major
38.7
41.2
28.7
58.6
The various business majors are too
isolated from each other
21.3
62.3
29.6
47.3
Accounting education is integrated
sufficiently with other business
disciplines
53.3
25.0
38.6
36.4
In summary, it appears that both practicing accountants and educators believe: (1) accounting
education has not changed enough to meet the changing needs of accountants, (2) that other majors
may now be preparing students as well or better for the work accountants now do, and (3) that
accounting education is too isolated from other business disciplines. These feelings are strong
enough to convince them that they would not get an accounting degree if starting over again today.
The idea of a career in accounting has lost favor because of technological and
competitive changes. Business people who want an interesting and rewarding career
are looking elsewhere.
A second reason why practicing accountants and educators would not study accounting today is
because of problems they perceive with accounting careers. The problems most often mentioned in
our research were:
1. Technology has made much of what accountants do obsolete and the demand for the traditional
work of accountants, audit and tax, has decreased.
2. Accounting careers are less attractive financially than other careers.
3. There is less psychic income from being an accountant than there used to be and the CPA brand is
not worth what it was previously.

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40
Accounting Education: Charting the Course through a Perilous Future
Technology Has Made Much of What Accountants Do Obsolete and the Demand for
the Traditional Work of Accountants, Audit and Tax, Is Not Increasing
One of the most pervasive themes we heard in our research was that technology has replaced
much of what accountants have historically done. No one is impressed by a neat set of financial
statements anymore—all of the gathering, recording, and reporting can now be done more efficiently
using any of a number of inexpensive software packages. One observer said:
What used to be a skill is no longer an important skill and that is true whether accounting is
outsourced or whether it is an internal, shared service. No matter where it’s done, it is done by
somebody’s data-processing system. If it’s outsourced, it appears on a screen on your desk. If it’s
done by a box underneath your desk, it’s still available on a screen. Now, the focus has to be on
being able to interpret and use the information provided on the screen. —Interviewee
As we suggested in Chapter 2, practitioners who saw this technology revolution coming have
repositioned themselves as interpreters and called themselves finance professionals, information
consultants, or decision-support specialists. Practitioners who have not made the transition have
been relegated to mechanical, uninspiring, and unrewarding jobs. The fear of being left behind in one
of those jobs has motivated both the IMA and AICPA to push their members to move up the
information value chain.
One focus group participant said:
As you know, the IMA changed its journal and called it Strategic Finance instead of Management
Accountant. It is my view that the term finance is a broader umbrella under which accounting
resides. I do use the terms interchangeably, but I guess if I had to pick one term, I would say that I
work in finance without necessarily thinking about it. —Participant, Atlanta Focus Group
Another focus group participant said it this way:
Accounting is like baseball. The game has not changed substantially in 100 years. But what has
changed is the expectations of team owners, the players, and the fans on the one hand and the
incredible number of tools we now have to deliver the game on the other hand. With more tools to
deliver the product, you can come up with an incredible array of additional statistics that people
can now recite off their fingertips like never before. We now know how many double plays in a
game and all that other stuff whereas when I was growing up all we focused on was runs, hits, and
errors. Just like in baseball—we don’t want to fail today and so the accountant who doesn’t
deliver this whole array of tools and has the right information at the right time is in trouble.
—Participant, Atlanta Focus Group
No one wants to be on the wrong side of the technological revolution. Accounting—as it has
been taught and practiced—is seen by many as a relic of the pre-information revolution, and so it is
not surprising that practicing accountants, knowing what they do now, would pursue a different
major if they were starting their education over again.
Accounting Careers Are Less Attractive Financially than Other Careers
Accounting careers are perceived by many professionals and educators to be less attractive than
other business careers in three ways:
1. As discussed in Chapter 3, starting salaries are lower.
2. Independence rules, the requirement to act as partnerships, and other regulations are restricting
the ability to accumulate the degree of wealth that is available to other business professionals.

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Chapter 4—Why Accounting Practitioners and Educators Would Not Major in Accounting Again
41
3. The perception is that accounting offers a more limited career track. There was a time when
accounting graduates could become the chief executives of their companies because of their
understanding of the company as a whole and their understanding of the importance of return-to-
investors. That perspective is no longer the exclusive property of accountants and, today, corpo-
rate value creation is considered to be more a factor of strategic thinking than anything else.
The problem of starting salaries was addressed in Chapter 2. The independence and other wealth
accumulation inhibitions are expressed well by the following Business Week quote:
Competition from Wall Street and Silicon Valley, where the rewards can be much richer, plays a
big part [in the shortage problem]. Big 5 accountants have just the expertise they need: they know
financial accounting, they’re technologically savvy, and they have had a broad experience in a
wide variety of businesses. But also to blame, many are beginning to argue, are regulations that
govern an auditor’s ability to invest in stocks.3
There is Less Psychic Income from Being an Accountant than There Used to Be and the CPA
Brand is Not Worth What It Was Previously
In two of our four focus groups, professional accountants made comments such as “the psychic
income from being a partner in a CPA firm isn’t as high as it used to be” and “the CPA brand isn’t
worth what it used to be.” Decreasing numbers of first-time candidates sitting for the CPA exam and
the movement of public accounting firms away from being CPA firms to professional service firms
tells us a great deal about the value of the CPA brand in the marketplace. The following quote
typifies this concern:
Many CPAs currently perceive the opportunities in public accounting to be changing, with less
perceived gain for continued demands and commitment. Many CPAs note that the traditional path
within a public accounting firm—making partner—is changing, and note greater lengths of time
currently necessary to achieve partner. —CPA Vision Project
On the other hand, management accountants—at least those who have successfully transitioned
themselves as finance professionals—do not seem to have suffered a similar loss in psychic income.
According to the IMA’s most recent study Counting More, Counting Less, the results show an
escalating change in the work performed by management accountants in their role in the organiza-
tion, and in the value they bring to business decision making.
We asked respondents to rank career choices according to their relative attractiveness. The
results found in the table on the following page support the general inclination away from traditional
accounting and auditing careers that we heard in our focus group discussions. These results are
discouraging to those who are responsible for recruiting for audit and tax functions in CPA firms.
They are even more discouraging for those who must recruit into internal audit and government
positions.
Consulting work, in any setting, and working in the accounting/finance area of a business
organization are perceived as the most challenging and rewarding careers. These results provide
some explanation why faculty and practitioners would not pursue an accounting degree today. Still,
these data show that all types of accounting careers are perceived quite positively, a fact that leads
us to believe that our respondents’ overall disinclination to pursue an accounting education is
motivated more by the perceived problems in accounting education than by perceived problems in
professional work.
Back to text
3
“Where Have All the Accountants Gone?” Business Week 2000.

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42
Accounting Education: Charting the Course through a Perilous Future
Faculty
Faculty
Practitioners
Practitioners
GO BACK
Who
Who
Who
Who
Strongly or
Strongly or
Strongly or
Strongly or
Somewhat
Somewhat
Somewhat
Somewhat
Question Asked
Disagreed
Agreed
Disagreed
Agreed
Working in the consulting area of a CPA
firm is a challenging and rewarding
career
0.7%%
92.5%
1.2%
88.6%
Working for a consulting firm is a
challenging and rewarding career
0.0%
89.9
2.3
86.7
Working in the accounting/finance area
of a business organization is a
challenging and rewarding career
1.4
92.9
7.2
82.6
Working in the tax area of a CPA firm
is a challenging and rewarding career
7.5
72.7
16.4
62.1
Working in the audit/assurance services
area of a CPA firm is a challenging and
rewarding career
14.2
66.3
19.9
59.1
Working for an investment banking
company is a challenging and rewarding
career
2.5
66.7
4.3
61.4
Working as a college professor is a
challenging and rewarding career
4.3
84.3
14.2
54.9
Working in an internal audit area in
a large organization is a challenging
and rewarding career
12.5
58.0
39.9
39.3
Working as a governmental accountant
is a challenging and rewarding career
32.8
30.2
49.5
25.1
Concluding Remarks
We must all be concerned that both educators and practitioners would choose different majors if
starting their education over again today. The perceived low value of an accounting education
appears to be caused by two problems: (1) their belief that accounting education does not provide a
clear advantage in preparing students to perform the expanding array of services being performed by
accountants (or finance professionals) today, and (2) some perceived negative aspects of accounting
work that are causing concern among today’s accountants.
While both of these reasons were frequently mentioned by focus group participants, we heard
more serious concerns about the nature of accounting education. In any event, this is the piece of the
problem about which accounting educators can do something. The professional organizations have
recognized their own career-image problems, and both the IMA and the AICPA have been working
hard to improve the work and image of their members. They must continue, and must further clarify
and intensify those campaigns. However, we must not rely on the profession to solve our problems.
We have problems with the image and value-added nature of accounting education and we must
address these problems ourselves.

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Document Outline

• Table of Contents
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Appendix
• References and Resources

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