The 150-hour requirement: Reasonable expectations?

Having read recent columns and letters about the 150-hour education requirement, the experience requirement, and the shortage of accounting graduates, I would like to offer some personal insight. First, I believe the profession is concerned with sometimes arcane rules, when the focus should be on summarizing and communicating economic information in a useful manner. Second, as accounting continues to evolve, the primary purpose of CPA training and licensing should remain attestation to the quality of financial statements. Third, although I do not have any quantitative evidence to support this theory, I believe that accounting has historically attracted individuals from modest economic backgrounds who find entry into older professions like law and medicine difficult.

The 150-hour education requirement appears to have many objectives, such as adjusting for the needs of weak students, allowing additional study of expanding technical literature, and raising the performance bar for new accountants. Nevertheless, at a time when more academic programs should accommodate nontraditional college students, the 150-hour education requirement could discourage individuals from modest economic backgrounds and those working while going to school. Because attracting more students to the profession is a priority, the academic expectations of students entering college-level accounting programs must be reasonable. At the same time, an academic program that fails to challenge students will fail to prepare them for the accounting profession.

While the 150-hour rule may be too demanding, reducing the already modest experience requirements for the CPA certificate is a mistake. Only through diverse experiences can new accountants develop the skills that are vital to financial statement attestation as well as other accounting and financial reporting issues. The likelihood of developing these skills solely in the classroom is slim.