Attracting the best and brightest students into the CPA profession

By Jimmy L. Williamson, CPA
Member, National CPA Vision Team

The number of new students going into the study of accounting is at an all-time low. As a result, the demand for new accounting graduates is far outstripping the available supply of new students graduating from college with an accounting degree.

Why are students not selecting accounting as their major field of study? Certainly there are plenty of career opportunities that await them upon graduation. Could it be that the study of accounting as a major is not as attractive to today's students because many students look at the accounting profession as a "back room" type of profession that only records and summarizes business and financial transactions? Could it be that they see accountants as the recorders of accounting history and that is just not very exciting or appealing to them?

Simply resistible: CPA seen in a dull light

The research completed by the Interpublic Group for the AICPA with students is eye-opening with respect to the way students perceive our profession as they evaluate a possible career choice.

The research indicates that students do not see the CPA profession as an attractive career option for several different reasons:

It is not perceived as exciting and challenging to them.
It is closely tied to mathematics, particularly in doing the tasks that a CPA performs.
It lacks the elite status accorded to lawyers, physicians and MBA business consultants.
CPA is a task-oriented profession, with little opportunity for interaction and high-level strategic thinking and decision-making.
Many students judge the accounting profession by their experiences in high school, where bookkeeping courses were being taught from a vocational training standpoint. Thus, it has a strong vocational flavor rather than a professional career connotation.
Finally, the term "accountant" is not exciting and does not bring out visions of high level strategic success in the students' minds.

Question: How do we change the perception the students have of CPAs and how do we begin a long-term campaign of educating them that today's CPA is not their father's CPA?

The future is in our hands

Clearly there is no one solution to this challenge, but there are several things we can do to better educate students, guidance counselors and parents on the merits of considering accounting as a professional career. Among these are the following:

Work with high school guidance counselors and high school students to help them see the CPA profession as enhanced and expanded in the CPA Vision project.
Work with teachers and students in connection with career days and career fairs to help bring the CPA profession to the forefront of students' minds as they explore career choices.
Use the latest communication and recruitment tools developed by the AICPA and state societies that present the CPA profession as a bold and exciting career option.
Use young staff to recruit high school students rather than individuals older than age 35. Why? The students can relate better to someone closer to their own age rather than individuals who are old enough to be their parents. They also trust what they tell them because they are closer to their own age.
The Interpublic Group study showed students had much more interest in the CPA credential when combined with the proposed XYZ credential. Why? Because they see the combination of CPA and XYZ as almost equivalent with attorneys and actually ahead of the MBA degree in terms of skills and competencies. This is because the XYZ credential is associated with much broader business skills, including technology, strategic and critical thinking and high-level business consulting and strategic planning.

To attract the best and brightest into our profession, we must be aggressive in the techniques and strategies we employ.

Today's students are not attracted to the same aspects of the profession that attracted most of us. They have to see more than what we have been showing them. They have to see a professional that offers exciting and challenging opportunities for growth and the potential to do much more than many of us have been content to do in the past. They want to be part of a profession, as seen the CPA Vision Project that is making sense out of a changing and complex world and that is utilizing skills of both the CPA and the XYZ credential to provide high-level strategic consulting and problem-solving solutions to key decision-makers.

We can attract them to a profession that, as stated in the CPA Vision "makes sense out of a changing and complex world," and that is providing high-level strategic consulting and problem-solving solutions to decision-makers.

If not you, who?

If not now, when?

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