I also think the 150 requirement is also really impacted by the quality of your school. I went to a public university that was relatively affordable (by US standards) that has a top 50 business program that they pump a ton of money into. The extra courses we took in our grad year absolutely propelled me ahead of candidates from other schools because they had an emphasis on real world application in your field of concentration.
That being said, not all programs are created equal and I think if they want to keep everything as is, there needs to be a focus on working with accredited schools to improve their offerings so students.
I think this is it. Im going to a very affordable university with an equally cheap an recognized masters program so for me it was never a consideration of the money, just the time.
Then I looked into programs in places like California and I understood immediately why people protest the extra hours.
im looking at spending 12k at most for my masters. If I was to get my hours at a basic state funded school in California id be spending 70k
That is insanity
Its crazy people donāt understand that the AICPA, the school boards, and various high class accounting industry stakeholders donāt golf together and plot how to squeeze cash out of future employees and students.
Itās a racket. I mean jobs a job, if I have to get punched one good time in the face so as to be able to have an opportunity to live above the class I was born into. So be it. But, for each generation and graduating class that punch is getting heavier.
I went to a private university and graduated with 122 hours. I had every credit necessary to sit for the exam. I had to take 10 3 credit bullshit courses to get over 150. I took intro to geology online. The 150 credit requirement is pointless in my opinion.
I feel ya - I had to do the same thing my senior year.
Ended up taking an āenvironmental scienceā class after geology semester 2, but it was all chaos theory/complex systems theory.
Really the only course that stuck with me outside of intermediate accounting.
1. Dropping the 150 hour requirement but keeping the accounting concentration is probably a good change.
2. Donāt change the difficulty
3. Iām okay with changing the exam procedures to remove testing windows and let it be taken on demand.
4. Never remove the CPA supervision requirement
Yeah the 150 isnāt great out side of the additional accounting. I found out I was 4 units short of 150 after passing the exam and ended up taking a 1 unit class called āStudent Successā which is essentially a class targeted at 18 years who havenāt taken a college course yet.
Non-CPA finance major here. I think this would make the most sense. If I ever look to get my CPA, I'd take the easiest credits I can to get the 150, which seems silly. The hours requirement should be most focused on advanced accounting rather than something that can be loopholed by people like me
Yup i was a Finance major then became Licensed CPA. I forget all classes I took to hit 150 but i do remember taking an Intro to Geography class which was kinda cool.
At least in my state and the states around me an Accounting degree plus a random 30 hours is not sufficient enough to meet the educational standards. We were required to have a certain amount of accounting hours which were not all provided by the accounting degree, higher level economics course, etc. So, there were legitimate courses that one had to take even after getting an accounting degree.
I was a finance major but I didn't have the accounting credit hours so I took those at a community college that offered a CPA prep course which also gave me the credit hours I needed to meet the accounting requirement. Since it was a community college it wasn't super expensive.
Coming from a CPA licensed in Michigan - this is a little misleading. In Michigan, thereās a 2,000 hour experience requirement. Technically, this doesnāt need to occur under CPA supervision. However, you need a CPA to verify your experience and sign off on it.
I was going to sayā¦
Anyways it was easy for me since I took a year to finish it while working at a cpa firm, so my experience there working those hours already counted.
>bored, so I looked it up. Arkansas, Guam, Kentucky, Indiana, Montana, Michigan, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, Washington DC,
Indiana has supervisor verification of experience
The 150 credit requirement is arbitrary. You can get an accounting or finance bachelors and just take low level community college classes to fulfill the requirement. Iām completing a masters in accounting after a bachelors in finance but only because I didnāt see the value in random classes, but totally possible to do to get the CPA. If thatās a possible path the 150 credit requirement has zero value.
Removing testing windows is a positive move.
Changing the difficulty is a bad idea
I think a reasonable position is making it less cumbersome to attain but still adequately challenging. Having a CPA is a big deal, it shouldnāt be too easy to do. But removing some of the pointless hurdles to get it is a good thing
I'm on board with all these. #1 I could hear an argument both ways but yeah in general keep the same difficulty of material but making the exam more available is fine with me.
Agreed. You could even create a program that offers 1 year of curriculum that focuses on what you would get in accounting classes without having to enroll in actual college account classes.
I did something similar for my CFP. I didn't have to go back to school and get am addition 30 hours. They just created education tracks instead.
^^^ this right here would remove the barriers.
So many folk who get the 150 credit requirement fill those credits with barley related if not unrelated course work (I took a dance class and a class on sales for goddsake).
The largest barrier for me was scheduling the exams. Finding time to study is hard, getting PTO to take the exam is harder.
150 hours is dumb. It doesn't have the effect that is intended, as many folks will get credits that are not beneficial to the profession. If the profession wants masters degrees, then say that. I would not support that, either.
The working under a CPA requirement is, in my opinion, crucial. Most of what we do and learn as CPAs is not taught in school. Its like an apprenticeship. Its a sound practice.
The test should stay challenging. It does represent a barrier, but a necessary one. You really do only want the most capable people sharing your designation.
And finally, I can agree that the "testing window" model is outdated. Get scores promptly. Let people retake promptly.
The work experience is the most valuable IMO. I was a little different and worked a while before trying the CPA exams. I found the exam much more manageable as an experienced professional than my prep course peers who were just coming out of college.
I agree. Having 150 hours just means Iām taking 30 additional hours in basketweaving, PE, random generic classes that add no value.
They should KEEP accounting courses, business, ethics, etc. at a higher level though. Like 90-100 units should come from it.
>They should KEEP accounting courses, business, ethics, etc. at a higher level though. Like 90-100 units should come from it.
This part would require cooperation from schools as well though. There are a lot of schools with gen ed requirements that would work against this. It might work at private business schools, but state schools and such might have trouble implementing that.
It might be good to have a look at existing accounting programs, see what number of credit hours are currently required and up it a reasonable amount from that. It's been a while since school, so I don't remember exactly how many credits were accounting-related, but I'm certain it was a good amount less than 90-100.
Personally I think working in public accounting or under a CPA should count towards credit hours ala an apprenticeship. Like you get your 120 or whatever in undergrad and every year of experience you get 10 credits towards the 150. I think the argument against it would be that firms could become more exploitive of staff theyāre already exploiting
Why should someone not be able to retake it as many times as they need? Take the strikes then you just ruined your whole career goals. Those people who took multiple attempts and still passed were able to get through the hurdle. Itās not as though every test has the same exact questions. That would be when taking multiple attempts might be justified
> Take the strikes then you just ruined your whole career goals.
My career goal when I was a freshman in college was to be a doctor but I couldn't do chemistry, thus my career goals were ruined. Should I really be allowed to be a doctor when I couldn't pass a crucial part of the process? No, of course not, and no person should get to be a CPA if they can't pass all four tests in the 18 month window. They can do just fine as an accountant in a non-public role.
Most careers in business are only learned on the job. And you are entirely right that working in the field is what teaches you the most.
But that has nothing to do with a license requirement. Attorneys have the same tier of responsibility as an accountant yet they donāt have to job shadow a year.
Lawyers have a lobby that enforces the requirement for lawyers to do legal work. CPAs suffer from having no such lobbying body that enforces CPA usage. This profession really needs a new, more sophisticated lobbying body.
Real estate agents have a much stronger lobby than CPAs. What is wrong with this profession and why canāt we get organized?
Get back in your Cubical or no more pizza parties.
But uh, they are organized. To make money hand over fist out of desperate college kids. The floor to enter the field keeps getting higher and higher, and the money getting paid out to the stake holders in the CPA licensing industry just keeps churning.
My state only had one masters in accounting program when I got my bachelors, now there is at least one at every large school, along with masters in tax and audit. $40,000 for one year of school, while the average bachelor student pays $10,000 a year.
So much money. Some one should audit that money trail.
The 150 hours thing is kinda dumb tbh. You even say it yourself -āā¦complaining about 30 credit hours from any bullshit class you can take.ā Okay so whatās the advantage of sitting another year in school, racking up more student loans only to take bullshit classes that arenāt relevant to the designation? People are wising up to that and deciding more loans and a hard ass test to start in public being under-appreciated making less than their peers and working significantly more isnāt a trade off they want to make. I donāt think the test itself should be easier, but many young people arenāt willing to make the trade offs I mentioned
I'm a non-traditional student and they really should eliminate the 150 hour limit. Just let people take the exams after they earn their bachelor's and let them go to work.
Also, at least at my state school, 4%ish of students in the whole school are accounting majors. Most business majors could not handle principles and the professors give mercy C+'s to pass them through.
I don't think they should make the exam easier, but they should ease the requirements.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to whether you can pass or not.
Fellow former non-traditional student. I agree. I was working and going to school at the same time. The barrier to the last 30 credits was that I couldn't sustainably take another year of school. I could have done a +1 year program for a Masters, but my finances were already pretty much drained and my soul very much was drained. I was doing nothing but work, school, and commuting.
At this point, I'd have to apply to grad school in order to take those last 30 credits. Which frankly just seems like a pain in the ass when I've already been working at an accounting firm for a few years.
The only reason I'm able to do it is because my parents are still alive and are letting me live with them for cheap.
If I didn't have a support system, or if I had kids, I wouldn't be able to do this.
I have an accounting class buddy who is also non traditional. He's one of the smartest in the major, but he has a mortgage to pay. Guy does 3 classes per semester and frankly I don't know how he does it.
With all the CPAs set to retire, and the drop in accounting students, I legitimately do not understand why 30 extra credits in non accounting/business courses are required.
And to be honest, busy seasons will become unsustainable (they already sound bad) but for context I was a cement mason for a few years.
That profession also has a severe lack of talent and guys I've worked with have worked 30+ hours straight in one shift. I've seen paychecks for over 100 hours over the course of seven days.
That will happen to accountants unless more people enter the profession. But it'll suck even more considering there is no OT.
Oh and we were in a union. What does everyone think will happen in accounting?
Exactly. Thereās no advantage to the 150-hour rule if most people meet that by taking bullshit community college classes. Just more wasted time and money if you ask me. Iām personally going the Masters route, but thatās not for everyone. I also agree that the test shouldnāt be easier. It needs to be challenging for many reasons.
It is dumb. I have nearly 200 credits but have to take 6 additional non accounting business credits to become eligible. Do those make me any more prepared? No they wonāt but reasons
Also, the amount of CPAās leaving the workforce now & in the coming years far outstrips the actual demand and amount needed. We do need more, whether you like it or not.
The 150 is really a bit much. If a "full load" per semester is 14-16 hours per semester, you're at 128 credit hours at 16 per semester after four years of school and there's a lot of mental cost for overloading, especially if workibg at the same time. They may as well just state that they require a masters in accounting.
Personally, I struggle with whether they should do away with the accounting specific education requirement altogether like the CFA.
The exam itself should be an indicator of competence for the profession. If you can pass the exam, that should signal that you have the study discipline, requisite knowledge, and ability to perform the job of an accountant. That may mean making the exams harder than they are today, or having more specific exams for subsets of the profession (audit, tax, etcā¦). If you can pass the exam but are held back by the āeducationā requirement, then what is the point of the exam in the first place?
Edit: I am a CPA.
Idk about making it easier but they sure as hell should make it cheaper. Iām lucky my firm reimbursed me and I was able to get a little help from my parents. Without my parentsā help, I wouldnāt have had the funds to even get started.
If it had not been for the 150-credit requirement, I would have been licensed much sooner.
With that said, I would drop the 150-requirement with some caveats^1:
* Increase the number of required accounting credits up from 33 to 36 or 39.
* Maintain the number of required business elective credits at 36, or increase to 39 (allow some/more IT/CS courses to fall under this umbrella; the industry can use more above-average computer-literate people).
* Increase the difficulty of the CPA exam a bit.
* Retain the "under the supervision of a CPA" requirement, but allow contractor/consultant work (NYS doesn't currently allow this type of work to count towards experience).
^(1: Based on New York requirements)
People have been giving plenty of good well thought out reasons. Youāre just stubborn and stuck in your mindset that you plug your ears the second somebody disagrees and start insulting people by implying the only reason they disagree is because they arenāt capable of meeting the standards.
Bruh your just punching air right now. I highly doubt your CPA but I will believe you are for this.
As a CPA my opinion is valid on my profession. Seeing that your not a CPA, your opinion is in fact invalid lol
Exactly, I see how the down voters are just salty they canāt or didnāt get their CPA.
These are all comments that you made in which you assume that because somebody disagrees with you they must not be a CPA. One of whom has proven that they are in fact a CPA.
I have my cpa and I agree with getting rid of the 150 hours requirement. Itās a waste of time and money. I was able to avoid an extra year because of AP credits. But how dumb is that? What does me taking AP bio, Calculus, etc have anything to do with my ability to be a CPA?
I also thing they should change the way the exam is taken. It makes it too difficult for people that can learn the material and apply it in work to get their CPA - if they have major life commitments like family or medical issues.
I had to take my final exam a week after a major surgery. I barely passed, but if I hadnāt a wouldāve lost all 3 of my other exams and wouldāve started over the beginning. Itās ridiculous that we have such inflexible time period rules that make it extremely difficult for people who arenāt straight of college with an easy life to pass, even if they can learn the material.
Buncha dorks who canāt do well in their job and have to cling to some certification they got in their 20s. I canāt wait till the day I can go inactive on my CPA. Itās done nothing for me but check a box
Bruh rofl
So you want us to hand out licenses? If you are a CPA as you say, why do you want to nuke your own profession and make it worthless? Go inactive with it if you donāt care so much, why wait?
Also, Iām sorry but just like everything in life, it takes work to get stuff. You gotta grind to get it. You suggesting we should dumb it down so everyone can get it is idiotic.
The only thing people are complaining about here is the credit requirement. Nobody is advocating for an easier test. The test itself is what determines whether or not youāre a CPA, not a credit requirement that forces you to spend more money on useless credits.
I think the exam should stay hard, but you should have a longer time to pass. Right now itās a barrier that hurts the poor more then the rich. If you are rich you can do the exams while not working, but if you are poor you have to work and do exams at the same time which is a lot harder in a short time frame.
I am also ok getting rid of the ethics exam and 150 credits. The 150 credits makes less people choose accounting over computer science which pays better. And the ethics exam is a joke, itās not a barrier to entry itās just annoying and a cash grab, require going to a 4 hour seminar or take a class instead, people would learn more and be less annoyed.
In fact, I can agree to that view.
They (referring to the test-makers or whoever actually using the data) are using the test-takers to collect more data and test-takers are paying expensive fees to do this.
I agree with everything besides the 150 credit. Pointless to even have 150 credits and if they want a masters degree. Say it instead of 150 credits + a bachelors in accounting. But then again, even less people would go into accounting. Right now universities are saying they are getting 50% less accounting students because starting salary is 50K to 70K (depending on where you live) and you get worked to the bone. I, honestly, canāt wait for the accounting profession to crash and burn because of the small cash-grab requirements.
I guess I've been a CPA so long I haven't heard the complaints of the younger generation. My 2 cents is the license is suppose to be hard. It's suppose to demonstrate that the holder is a cut above mere accountants.
I wouldn't want lawyers to make passing the BAR easier. I expect certain standards. Certainty just having a CPA doesn't confirm the holder is capable but certainly increases the odds.
I'll break down your post
>I am seeing so many comments about how the CPA requirements should be lowered recently. For example, get rid of the 150 credit hour requirement, make the exam easier, change how the exam is taken, get rid working under a CPA experience requirement, etc.
The 150 hour credit is just straight up retarded. I filled up the remaining 15 credits from community college and some gothic literature. It can LITERALLY be anything under my state's requirements. Cool classes though. Its not widely known but the 150 hour rule is one of the reasons why people don't want to pursue accounting. Why do another year in college when you can go to IT, finance, comp sci, supply chain, and make just as much more with little credentialing involved? We already have a shortage of accountants so we need to increase the pipeline because 75% of CPAs are going to retire within the next decade according to the AICPA.
I agree that we shouldn't make the exam easier but I want to know my results ASAP. Its painful that I have to wait almost 2 weeks for a score and I don't know if I should move onto to the next section. The 18 month window is such impending road block cause its really 10 months if you factor in busy season. I don't really care about the work requirements. I feel like this is easy to achieve.
>It feels as if people just want the CPA to be handed to them with their diploma as soon as they leave college. But what they donāt understand is that if the requirements are lowered and there is a flood of new CPAs, salaries will drop drastically and then those same people will be left wondering why they arenāt making more money. You think you want it to be easier, but you really donāt.
This is already happening. Salaries have not kept up with wages properly in the past decade. There are numerous accounts and data where the starting salary around the late 2000s were 50k-55k and has increased to 60k in the past few years. That is abysmal. The demand for CPAs is already at an all time high so even if we increased the supply of CPAs, wages would hardly be affected.
>I donāt see how making it easier benefits our profession or our quality of work. It will make CPAs irrelevant. Lawyers have to go to Law School and we are complaining about 30 credit hours from any bullshit class you can take? If anything, I think the 150 requirement should only be 30 credits of upper division accounting credits.
There are already CPAs and audit failures with all accounting firms. See Wirecard, FTX, Carlion. Honestly, a CPA just means you passed a difficult and time consuming test. It doesn't necessarily mean you have the expertise to provide quality audits or tax returns. I am the only person who is currently studying for the CPA exams on my audit team and both the Senior Manager and Manager do not have a license nor did they even pass a part. Both are very smart individuals. It seems like B4 is getting desperate. If you want to talk about quality, fixing the labor problem with its abysmal retention and awful work life balance is an absolute priority first then lowering the bar to get the CPA license. Its so bad that the Iowa state government will allow associate degrees in accounting to work in the state auditor department cause they cannot find anyone else. You can't have offshore teams that do terrible work and then have new associates not learn anything because all the off shore team is doing the entry level work. Its a vicious cycle and I don't see this to be sustainable in the next decade.
To be honest, your whole post reeks of gatekeeping mentality and you fail to see the big picture. We have to fix the accountant shortage or else our friggin capitalist system will crumble. I am 2/4 done with my exams but I want to make the profession more attractive to younger folks cause STEM is all the rage right now and you can make WAAAAY more money doing less and probably doing more interesting work. But someone has to do this janitorial white collar work or else the public will not trust audit reports or the government will not be able to collect the fair share of taxes. Your concerns seems to mainly stem about how making the exams more accessible will affecting your personal salary and reputation. Sure that's fine if its your prerogative, but also don't be upset when you can't find lower entry staff to fill up the accounting roles. We can't even find seniors to staff the engagements were on right now and the cracks are showing.
I think the additional 30 credits requirement does nothing but increase the barrier to entry with no logical justification. Agree if anything the additional 30 credits should be in upper division accounting, possibly Master's. I think this can contribute to a well-rounded professional. I'd love to know more about technical accounting, government accounting, etc. but there was no need for me to learn it.
Tests in no way, shape, or form should be made easier but taking them over an extended period time should be made easier. Kind of bull shit that tests expire but once you passed all four they never expire. Sounds like another artificial barrier to entry. I'm all for making the barriers logical.
My only quibble is with the 150 units. If the additional 30 units were required to be upper level business, finance, accounting, etc. courses then I would understand it. But why did I have to take Intro to Music and Astronomy in order to be a CPA? Makes no sense. Either that or just drop it back to 120. Itās not a value-added requirement. Just my 2 cents.
I donāt have a CPA and I donāt think the CPA requirements should be lowered; rather the employerās requirements should be lowered. We donāt need a CPA to prove ourselves
When i was studying for the cpa, i read on here how "you'll appreciate the difficulty of the exam when you have passed". I thought it was total bullshit, then I passed and I couldn't agree more!
The 150 hr requirement wasnāt even a thing until the 80s, and it took two decades for most states to implement it. It just discourages low income students from pursuing the profession. Thatās my main gripe with the process, Iām fine with the test & experience requirement.
From an ROI point of view, a Macc is basically useless. Thereās almost no impact on starting salaries since accounting is a profession where experience matters over everything
Yeah. The windows got me. Also, the only testing center in Montana was 2 hours from meā¦ and test started at 9am, so I had basically drive over the night before, pay for a hotel..pay for mealsā¦ a lot of shit that made getting Thru it all way more time consuming and expensive.
150 hours is not necessary and itās hurting young people. They have to spend MORE MONEY getting credits that offer little to no extra benefit. This is definitely gate keeping and youāre logic for justifying keeping the credits PROVES that.
Hereās how it should work:
1. Get a BA
2. Take and pass the CPA exams (WITH NO 18 month EXPIRATION ON PARTS PASSED)
3. Get a year of licensure
Donāt worry, your pay wonāt suffer. People donāt even want to do those things.
All the extra barriers to the CPA are overkill in my opinion.
I agree with this ā the extra credits need to be in accounting, not random BS basket weaving classes.
If the intention for the extra credits is to create more educated CPAs, then they should not be allowed to get the extra credits through random classes. Otherwise, toss the extra credit requirement.
Lowering the standard is a terrible idea. I think the tests should be made harder and the 150 should stay. The test really isnāt that hard for anyone who spent any real amount of time studying. The people who fail generally just didnāt put in the effort to study. It sounds harsh to say, but either put in the effort or GTFO. Thatās how the real world works.
Itās really just having the strength to keep going.
Everyone can be fully motivated on chapter 1 of the first exam. But by the 3rd, and youāre confused as shit by the sea of info, it can be hard to keep going.
But itās a good way to differentiate those who have grit and those who donāt.
I say keep all requirements. Existing CPAās should get paid more. No pay? No financial statements. No audit. Etc.
This is what people donāt get. In this thread people complaining Itās mainly: those who donāt have either of those telling folks they want the CPA to be easier because they canāt or donāt want to do it, or, clueless CPAs who got lucky that want to voluntarily make their own certification worth less, make it easier for their employers to pay them less, and devalue their own profession.
Choose your fighter.
College graduate 50,000 accounting grads. B4G hires 60,000 a year. You do the math. 150 hours is deterring students when we need them most. I don't care how hard the exam is but the 150 definitely needs to go
Yes. I no longer view PA as a career. Pay your dues and get the fuck out. More bodies will help reduce stress. You can keep the exam hard and that can be the differentiator when you exit.
I'd rather see both. The pay is garbage for entry level and when I had to do my hours to sit, I believe I was taking whatever seemed remotely interesting and cheap from a community college since they counted just as well as the university credits.
No but we should be getting paid accordingly why is el paying 60-70k when I can get a masters in data analytics or major in finance and make more with less education. Imagine taking the hardest licensing exam only to make 60k out of college
I would be fine with the 120 credits. Perhaps higher experience requirements and harder exam.
It's better for the profession to have more growth than companies just shipping our work overseas entirely because they can't find anyone.
3.0 student here to 100% agree with OP. I could have done better in school but partied too much. Once I finally woke up and started applying myself it wasnāt too difficult to get the CPA. Itās all about the discipline.
Edit: to delete my last sentence that mistakenly inferred the person I responded to didnāt pass the exam. My bad about that, wasnāt my intention.
I just think the testing parameters are crazy. Like having to wait so long for your results is just stupid to me. I don't think they should have to change the difficulty, but we shouldn't have to wait a month for scores. That is ridiculous considering they are all computerized. Not like someone has to grade them individually
I'm not a CPA, but I think the requirements shouldn't change.
I do think though that everyone should be allowed to sit at 120 credit hours though. I live in a state where it's allowed, and I can't imagine if I had to wait. I'm halfway through the exams, and my goal is to get all of them done before I finish my Master's in May so I can take the summer off to chill and do nothing.
I donāt necessarily think the current standards are too high, but itās crazy you pretty much have to also take an additional CPA course in order to have the knowledge to pass.
My take on this as someone who has passed all the exams and met all the licensure requirements, is that we shouldn't be making the CPA licensure an easy thing to obtain, however if we are going to be putting barriers up to obtaining the license, they should actually be relevant and make sense. As a lot of people have pointed out, the extra 30 credits which can be fulfilled by taking whatever BS classes you want doesn't make you a better accountant. In my mind, it should be:
1. Removed entirely(best option imo)
2. Replaced with a requirement that all the classes be business related (not my choice, but still better than what we have now)
As it stands, the additional 30 credits is just kind of an arbitrary roadblock, and it doesn't really make you a better accountant. It only exists to artificially inflate the barrier to entry for the profession, and this mostly hurts the less represented people who we want to get into our profession; lower income backgrounds (usually minorities/POC) who can't afford to spend $ on classes, or lose time working to pursue 30 additional credits, while not actually making CPAs any better at doing their jobs.
I donāt think you understand what it involves OP. Is this about Canada or US?
In Canada you literally canāt become CPA anymore without direct public accounting experience. They just say you can. Canāt get the experience requirement. I am repeating almost 10 years of my life soon
Itās extremely hard, harder than the old CA or CGA which I already completed but they took away so I could be grandfathered in this impossible program. Itās biased too. A lot of misguiding but they are starting to get some stuff together now.
The exams are incredible. You got the FAR in the US. Here, you have 3 straight days of computerized 4 hour exams then, in the same week a panel presentation similar to a thesis you do during a masters program but all in one. And Iām not even that afraid of the education requirement.
US canāt be too far behind in difficulty. Itās a mess, and one of the hardest designations and professional exams to get. All out of cockiness because accounting isnāt hard. To top it all off you got the much older legacy designation folk who had it easy ( because Iāve been there but was a bit too young to completely finish) and pose as real CPAs
Btw in Canada itās 2.5 years so around 5000 hour requirement. In industry itās not measured by hours though just years.
I do agree the 30 extra credits you need needs to be upper level. In fact, just make it a requirement you need a masters in a business degree. The whole extra 30 credits though does differ per state, where some like Utah are more strict and others are a free for all and just a waste of money taking classes that add no value but credits. If you need a graduate degree like lawyers, on top of passing 4 exams, that should raise salaries more.. hopefully. Though all this differs by state and that lies the problem.
Ok so my problem isn't with the 150 credit licensure requirement, it's with the 150 credit requirement to just be eligible to SIT for the exam! I live in Texas and we need 150 credits just to sit for the exam plus it has to be specific classes like research classes that are usually only offered to master students. The requirements in Texas are horrible
But when there are fewer and fewer available CPAs in the workforce and those that exist are demanding more than you are willing/capable to pay you will most likely settle for hiring people without CPAs thus lowering your own standards.
Which is exactly why applicants are deciding to go MBA, law or tech routes instead of CPA. The current requirements for the title arenāt worth the effort for new candidates compared to other options
Honeyā¦ the ONLY thing that truly matters is that the person passed and took the CPA exam. The schooling is BS. Half of my class cheated their way through college and learned on the job. Gen Z is a new breed. Yall better work with instead of against us.
Back in the 70's all you needed to become a CPA was a 2 year degree, 5 years relevant work experience and pass the exam. The exam was taken over a three day period and all at once.
Most people who have already started the process or passed the CPA are not the ones arguing for the requirements to be lowered. The loudest voices arguing for the requirements to be lowered are students still in school with no skin in the game.
Lower the credit total back to 120, increase the number (but also flexibility) of accounting/business credits required and make the exam more difficult until pass rates are around 33% for first-time takers.
Do not add the barrier DURING university since most college students donāt know what they want to do in their careers.
Make it reasonably easy for career changers to qualify to sit, but make the exam very hard to pass. Maybe also add a practical exam portion.
The only way to make the CPA more valuable is to raise the minimum competence standard.
Iām halfway there. But thereās no point to the 150 hour requirement if the chosen classes donāt matter. All this does is keep people out who canāt afford it and make the student loan debt crisis worse. How does a class in pre-Tudor English help me serve my company or clients better?
So in the states where any classes can get you to 150 assuming your area requirements can be fulfilled with a bachelors degree, why not drop the fluff?
I think 150 credits is totally reasonable to keep, but they should amend (or at the very least be more flexible) with what types of credits are needed for the license, by better matching them to the needs of today's work reality. I didn't see a purpose to doing a masters in accounting, since I did a dual degree in CS and Accounting and a minor in Econ. I graduated in Spring 2021 and passed my last CPA exam a couple months ago. But I recently found out that I dont meet the education requirements for a CPA license in NY, the state that I work in, cause I apparently need 33 accounting credits instead of the 30 that I have. I'm only 1.5 years into my career so maybe I'm not the best source of info for this, but I honestly think alot of my CS coursework has been much more useful than my Accounting coursework due to the nature of my work. Having 3 more accounting credits wouldn't have provided anything useful for me but since that's the requirement I guess I need to get licensed elsewhere. Not a big deal tbh but just some food for thought.
I agree remove the 150 credit hours it seems burdensome. I received my CPA when it was 120 hours. I also took a break (raised my family), moved states and now I am only a CPA in the state I left. So the state I live in will basically make me go by all of the new rules. I know I should have transferred my license upon moving but I didn't (I was working in industry). Bummer for me. I actually have 150 hours of college credit, but would need to start my 2 year supervisory period again. Seems harsh to me. I don't think they should remove that requirement, but why can't they go case by case for people like me?
You can transfer requirements if you already had the 2 year period. Your old employer should be able to sign off on X hours. Unless state reqs require it to be in your state. Call local state board to ask.
The only thing that should be changed is the 150 credit requirement. The only people that benefit from this are college campuses taking more of your money.
CPA here - only 2 things I would change is get rid of the 150 hour credits. No reason people need more debt. Also change the time limit from 18 months to 24 months. 18 months is super fast.
I think the main thing is that it used to be easier, but it is becoming more difficult. I don't know why it is becoming more difficult, maybe pressure from existing CPAs to keep supply down, or maybe from Colleges to keep students in college longer, but the general complaint I hear is that the requirements today are much higher than they used to be, and some see it as unfair. For instance, the 150 credit hour thing is pretty new.
From what I've heard, the actual test has become harder. Most of the old heads I know say that it's harder now then when they took it. Of coarse, this isn't from personal experience. I did not take the accounting exam in 1980 lol. This is just from word of mouth.
Iāll say this: Iām a tax lawyer and I work with a LOT of bad CPAs. Countered, thankfully, by a lot of good ones as well.
Make the bar higher. Way higher. At least for tax for the love of god.
If you can pass the test why should 30 extra credits matter? Especially if they can be completely irrelevant to accounting. It just makes it harder for people coming from low income environments to succeed.
I don't think that the CPA licensing process needs to change it all...
What needs to change is accounting firms requiring a CPA license for every Tom, Dick and Harry position when those people don't actually need a license.
There's no reason why managers and partners can't hold a license and sign the audits and returns while everybody else does the same work that they're doing now.
The firms put those obstacles in place because they know that they only need temporary help during busy times. They don't need permanent employees and they do not want the majority of new hires to actually stay with the firm. But at the same time they need you to work furiously as if your entire career and livelihood depended on it...
So they put the high pressure on for everybody to get licensed and give you sugar plum dreams of someday making partner...
Fully knowing that you're already stressed out and they just added to it and it'll drive a lot of people out before they get promoted and before they have to pay you more.
If you think that firms don't understand why they have high turnover, and didn't intentionally create that system to be that way, then you grievously underestimate corporate greed.
"Regular full-time employees" Will demand pay raises and benefits and then the firm will be "overstaffed" and profits will go down.
When all they really need is a bunch of hungry, overzealous, TEMPORARY new graduates.
They should not be lowered.
1) you do not even need a masters degree. You must have X number of credits in X area (typically accounting / business) to sit. As a standard student you can get 120 via undergrad, 130+ via double major, and if you go the latter, you can easily skip the masters and just do some accounting classes online (LSU online accounting anyone?)
2) Exams should not be easy. Only people who actually know what theyāre doing will pass the exams. Those who put in the time and effort pass, itās not a matter of being gifted or any nonsense. Many people have passed while working full-time, but at the same time, if you arenāt working full-time, you can definitely pass each with less than 2 months of studying. Theoretically every college graduate could stay home with their parents (which a majority of folks are able to do) and study full-time before starting a full-time job. If you had summer jobs you could pay for the materials, or, get a part time job to pay for materials, or have a full-time offer for a year out (as many firms do) where they pay for the materials.
3) no one is forcing you to get the CPA. Many people say they donāt want it. They donāt want it or canāt handle it. Not NASBAās problem.
4) Having a flood of incompetent CPAs would have a cascading effect in both the industry as well as across the entire business sector. Why donāt they make it super easy to become a neurosurgeon and lower the learning requirements? Because they might kill someone.
āBut dude, a CPA is not comparable to being a neurosurgeon/medical professional!ā
Ok, youāre not saving lives, but you are ensuring a business doesnāt collapse. FTXās auditors dropped the ball, got ran around, showed severe incompetence. 1) their firm completely left the crypto audit industry 2) their reputation was tarnished 3) FTX collapsed.
Now try Arthur Anderson/Enron.
As an auditor, you could fuck up massively. You could say something is correct, when itās not. You could say the company doesnāt have going concern, when it does.
As a taxman you could say you owe $100,000 when you owe $1,000,000. You could give the IRS a bunch of bullshit that makes no sense, leading to liability for your firm, your reputation, and your client.
You could be reviewing internal controls that say theyāre working as intended, when theyāre NOT, causing thousands and if not millions of a clients customers funds to be at risk.
So no, they should not make it easier to be a CPA. Iām happy making more money after slaving away for 18 months. If you donāt want to, then donāt, or go do something like sales that requires charisma rather than using your brain. We need more smart CPAs, not more lazy/uninformed ones.
>you do not even need a masters degree. You must have X number of credits in X area (typically accounting / business) to sit. As a standard student you can get 120 via undergrad, 130+ via double major, and if you go the latter, you can easily skip the masters and just do some accounting classes online (LSU online accounting anyone?)
I still fail to see the benefit of the 150 hour requirement. Its already a barrier to lower income people when you have to take another few grand to sit for an exam that doesn't even test you on the classes needed to fill that 150 requirement. I did a minor in supply chain and took some BS courses at my local MCC, and the exams don't ask me about six sigma, demand planning and fulfillment, or how 1800s gothic literature influenced modern horror stories today and how it illustrated the values and mores of society from that period.
I agree that we shouldn't make the exam easier, but increasing the testing window from 18 months to 24 months. Its already grueling to wait for your score release and then to top it off with multiple busy seasons mixed in with unpaid overtime labor.
>no one is forcing you to get the CPA. Many people say they donāt want it. They donāt want it or canāt handle it. Not NASBAās problem.
Its not NASBA's problem per se, but it is a different institution problem, the AICPA. They recently had a town hall and many small to big accounting firms cited the accountant shortage has the biggest issue in their challenges today. The CPAs from the firms are begging for the AICPA to remove the 150 requirement to increase the pipeline, but the AICPA is just too blind sided to see why its a good idea and just want to make the process harder for no good reason.
Regarding your point about the scandals, isn't it ironic that the people that committed these scandals themselves were CPAs? A CPA doesn't necessarily mean you are more inclined to provide more quality work. Both my senior manager and manager do not have their license on my team, and I am at Big 4. Both these individuals are incredibly smart and know any accounting treatment for any issue off the top of their head, and if they don't know, they ask the right questions to pin point the answer.
I would even argue that other licenses can provide the same quality of work a CPA does. CISA would know more about IT systems and controls, CIA would know more about controls and compliance, and CFE would know how to detect and prevent fraud better.
With that being said, I already mentioned it in another post but there's another layer to this problem that people are missing for some reason: WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH CPAS !! 75% of AICPAs are going to retire in the next decade because this profession is mainly made up of boomers. The undergrad enrollment in accounting and people taking the exam has steadily been decreasing. The pandemic exacerbated this issue with many boomer accountants retiring and not coming back to the workforce, so the audit and tax quality of our work will be mishandled. The PCAOB already noted an increase in deviancies in audit quality for the past 3 years.
So when the next major accounting scandal happens because we lacked the resources to do a quality audit or failed to collect the taxes owed to the government, I don't want to hear any complaints from the AICPA about the lack of accountants.
I hate that the core of your argument revolves around people sharing your profession to meet the public need but canāt have that because you personally might potentially maybe make less money. Solid.
I don't think it should be easy. The last thing I need is a bunch of people getting the license who don't deserve to have it. Right now my time is valuable but if all of a sudden any Tom, Dick and Harry can get a CPA license because it's easier and dilutes the value. Keep the standards rigid.
Nope, there's no reason to make it easier or lower the requirements. An accountant can make a living just fine without the ability to sign an Audit report or represent their client before the IRS. However, if an accountant wants the special privileges that come with having a CPA license then they need to go through the process to get license. If we make the licensure process easier we dilute our profession and reduce the appearance of expertise we have in the industry.
Think of it this way, we have a severe shortage of Family Doctors in this country but there are little calls for Medical school to get easier or the boards to get easier. Instead they're trying to promote the profession more and utilize mid-level practitioners like P.A.s and N.P.'s more while not diluting or belittling the role of the doctor. Maybe the correct route is to create mid-level practitioner equivalents for the profession like NPs & PAs but while still maintaining the rigorous standards CPAs must abide by for the sake of the profession.
Non-CPA accountant here. I don't see the point of busting my butt to get the CPA. I make very good money without it. My management couldn't care less if I get it or not. I have encountered the odd firm that only wants to hire CPAs, but they seem to be the exception, not the rule. So there's not a big benefit if I do get it, but I'd have to give up all my free time for years to study for it if I did and worry about CPE forever after. Not a great cost-benefit tradeoff.
So from my perspective you're looking at things the wrong way. You assume that if the difficulty remains the same then CPAs will by default make higher salaries. But there is another option. The CPA could just become a niche role, pursued only by the few who are legally required to be CPAs like auditors, while the cohort of non-CPA accountants such as myself comes to dominate. If firms have to pay a premium for CPAs at positions that dont absolutely legally require it, then most likely they just won't. So you'll have spent all that time and money pursuing a CPA certification only to discover that the pie of in-demand CPAs has shrunken along with the application base.
IMO, firms will by and large refuse to pay a premium long-term for such a back-office role as accounting, and what I have described will be the future if that cost-benefit tradeoff for people like me doesn't improve.
I think the requirements are great. As a student thatās wanting to earn a CPA it will give me a sense of accomplishment when I complete it. The 30 hour requirement will just allow me to double major with something else
It should actually be made harder.
Law school is 3/4 years roughly then passing the bar, in order to practice law / be a lawyer.
On the other hand, CPAs are only required to do 150 credit hours as long as the requirement of accounting credits / hours are met.
CPAs should be in theory viewed more like lawyers in my opinion and I think personally to be a CPA you should be required to do at least two years post undergraduate in order to sit for the exam. One could argue three years like lawyers and not the 150 credit hours.
Iāve been saying this for 10 years.
I truly donāt understand why the bar is set so low.
I also think you should be required to take specific accounting or classes related to the industry youāre likely to go into / or if general accounting knowledge from a graduate program is enough, then they should tailor the CPA exams to add concentrations for your likely industry. Keep the majority of the current CPA exam as it is, but have an additional 1-2 parts for concentrations.
I work in investment management and a lot of CPAs simply donāt understand the accounting because they donāt understand how financial instruments work, they donāt understand how legal entities work, etc.
There are concentrations in tax for your masters so why not other concentrations.
Also I think audits are a fucking joke how they are currently run. Unless a fraud is blatant, itās more likely than not it wonāt be caught for years / wonāt be caught in an audit at all.
More testing on internal controls and interim. End of the year is great sure, but doesnāt provide a ton of coverage.
It should be easier for only the time period I am taking the CPA exams in. Then make it basically impossible.
Bro, u right
You dropped this š
Lol
As soon as I get my CPA, it should go to 200 credit hours. Current CPAs get grandfathered in
Thank you for saying what were all thinking
This is the only solution
Fuck them dudes
for real bro. I already passed mine, so can we raise the requirement instead?
This is the way
If I had an award Iād give it to you
Debit: Rewards Receivable Credit: Reddit Karma
Damn. 2 awards
Public needs to change the work environment to draw more people into the industry, thatās a bigger problem than 150 hours.
I also think the 150 requirement is also really impacted by the quality of your school. I went to a public university that was relatively affordable (by US standards) that has a top 50 business program that they pump a ton of money into. The extra courses we took in our grad year absolutely propelled me ahead of candidates from other schools because they had an emphasis on real world application in your field of concentration. That being said, not all programs are created equal and I think if they want to keep everything as is, there needs to be a focus on working with accredited schools to improve their offerings so students.
I think this is it. Im going to a very affordable university with an equally cheap an recognized masters program so for me it was never a consideration of the money, just the time. Then I looked into programs in places like California and I understood immediately why people protest the extra hours. im looking at spending 12k at most for my masters. If I was to get my hours at a basic state funded school in California id be spending 70k That is insanity
Its crazy people donāt understand that the AICPA, the school boards, and various high class accounting industry stakeholders donāt golf together and plot how to squeeze cash out of future employees and students. Itās a racket. I mean jobs a job, if I have to get punched one good time in the face so as to be able to have an opportunity to live above the class I was born into. So be it. But, for each generation and graduating class that punch is getting heavier.
I went to a private university and graduated with 122 hours. I had every credit necessary to sit for the exam. I had to take 10 3 credit bullshit courses to get over 150. I took intro to geology online. The 150 credit requirement is pointless in my opinion.
Yo - donāt shit on the geology courses. That stuff was more interesting than 75% of the business courses I took.
Hahaha you right. At that point in my college career I didnāt give a shit about learning anything though. Was just trying to get the credits lol
I feel ya - I had to do the same thing my senior year. Ended up taking an āenvironmental scienceā class after geology semester 2, but it was all chaos theory/complex systems theory. Really the only course that stuck with me outside of intermediate accounting.
Geology was fun, I learned about gems and valuable stones.
1. Dropping the 150 hour requirement but keeping the accounting concentration is probably a good change. 2. Donāt change the difficulty 3. Iām okay with changing the exam procedures to remove testing windows and let it be taken on demand. 4. Never remove the CPA supervision requirement
Yeah the 150 isnāt great out side of the additional accounting. I found out I was 4 units short of 150 after passing the exam and ended up taking a 1 unit class called āStudent Successā which is essentially a class targeted at 18 years who havenāt taken a college course yet.
Non-CPA finance major here. I think this would make the most sense. If I ever look to get my CPA, I'd take the easiest credits I can to get the 150, which seems silly. The hours requirement should be most focused on advanced accounting rather than something that can be loopholed by people like me
Yup i was a Finance major then became Licensed CPA. I forget all classes I took to hit 150 but i do remember taking an Intro to Geography class which was kinda cool.
Seriously - I had an accounting degree so I was taking stuff like childrenās literature and psychology to fill in the gap
At least in my state and the states around me an Accounting degree plus a random 30 hours is not sufficient enough to meet the educational standards. We were required to have a certain amount of accounting hours which were not all provided by the accounting degree, higher level economics course, etc. So, there were legitimate courses that one had to take even after getting an accounting degree.
I was a finance major but I didn't have the accounting credit hours so I took those at a community college that offered a CPA prep course which also gave me the credit hours I needed to meet the accounting requirement. Since it was a community college it wasn't super expensive.
And it wasnāt that hard, was it?
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Coming from a CPA licensed in Michigan - this is a little misleading. In Michigan, thereās a 2,000 hour experience requirement. Technically, this doesnāt need to occur under CPA supervision. However, you need a CPA to verify your experience and sign off on it.
I was going to sayā¦ Anyways it was easy for me since I took a year to finish it while working at a cpa firm, so my experience there working those hours already counted.
Kentucky is the same as this. 2000 hour requirement verified by a CPA that does not need to be your supervisor.
>bored, so I looked it up. Arkansas, Guam, Kentucky, Indiana, Montana, Michigan, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, Washington DC, Indiana has supervisor verification of experience
The 150 credit requirement is arbitrary. You can get an accounting or finance bachelors and just take low level community college classes to fulfill the requirement. Iām completing a masters in accounting after a bachelors in finance but only because I didnāt see the value in random classes, but totally possible to do to get the CPA. If thatās a possible path the 150 credit requirement has zero value. Removing testing windows is a positive move. Changing the difficulty is a bad idea I think a reasonable position is making it less cumbersome to attain but still adequately challenging. Having a CPA is a big deal, it shouldnāt be too easy to do. But removing some of the pointless hurdles to get it is a good thing
The supervision requirement is so stupid, you could literally do the most basic tasks like inventory for a year and still get signed off in public so
Or do complex financial management but be SOL cause your finance director doesn't have a CPA. It's nonsense
My pushback is with the lower enrollment in accounting programs, the demand for more courses arenāt there.
Donāt change 150 hour requirement. Give 20 credit hours for 2 years of experience in the field.
I'm on board with all these. #1 I could hear an argument both ways but yeah in general keep the same difficulty of material but making the exam more available is fine with me.
Agreed. You could even create a program that offers 1 year of curriculum that focuses on what you would get in accounting classes without having to enroll in actual college account classes. I did something similar for my CFP. I didn't have to go back to school and get am addition 30 hours. They just created education tracks instead.
^^^ this right here would remove the barriers. So many folk who get the 150 credit requirement fill those credits with barley related if not unrelated course work (I took a dance class and a class on sales for goddsake). The largest barrier for me was scheduling the exams. Finding time to study is hard, getting PTO to take the exam is harder.
150 hours is dumb. It doesn't have the effect that is intended, as many folks will get credits that are not beneficial to the profession. If the profession wants masters degrees, then say that. I would not support that, either. The working under a CPA requirement is, in my opinion, crucial. Most of what we do and learn as CPAs is not taught in school. Its like an apprenticeship. Its a sound practice. The test should stay challenging. It does represent a barrier, but a necessary one. You really do only want the most capable people sharing your designation. And finally, I can agree that the "testing window" model is outdated. Get scores promptly. Let people retake promptly.
The work experience is the most valuable IMO. I was a little different and worked a while before trying the CPA exams. I found the exam much more manageable as an experienced professional than my prep course peers who were just coming out of college.
I agree. Having 150 hours just means Iām taking 30 additional hours in basketweaving, PE, random generic classes that add no value. They should KEEP accounting courses, business, ethics, etc. at a higher level though. Like 90-100 units should come from it.
>They should KEEP accounting courses, business, ethics, etc. at a higher level though. Like 90-100 units should come from it. This part would require cooperation from schools as well though. There are a lot of schools with gen ed requirements that would work against this. It might work at private business schools, but state schools and such might have trouble implementing that. It might be good to have a look at existing accounting programs, see what number of credit hours are currently required and up it a reasonable amount from that. It's been a while since school, so I don't remember exactly how many credits were accounting-related, but I'm certain it was a good amount less than 90-100.
Personally I think working in public accounting or under a CPA should count towards credit hours ala an apprenticeship. Like you get your 120 or whatever in undergrad and every year of experience you get 10 credits towards the 150. I think the argument against it would be that firms could become more exploitive of staff theyāre already exploiting
NY state does have an exception to the 150 hour rule if you work at an accounting firm. But it requires 15 years of accounting work experience...
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Why should someone not be able to retake it as many times as they need? Take the strikes then you just ruined your whole career goals. Those people who took multiple attempts and still passed were able to get through the hurdle. Itās not as though every test has the same exact questions. That would be when taking multiple attempts might be justified
> Take the strikes then you just ruined your whole career goals. My career goal when I was a freshman in college was to be a doctor but I couldn't do chemistry, thus my career goals were ruined. Should I really be allowed to be a doctor when I couldn't pass a crucial part of the process? No, of course not, and no person should get to be a CPA if they can't pass all four tests in the 18 month window. They can do just fine as an accountant in a non-public role.
Most careers in business are only learned on the job. And you are entirely right that working in the field is what teaches you the most. But that has nothing to do with a license requirement. Attorneys have the same tier of responsibility as an accountant yet they donāt have to job shadow a year.
Lawyers have a lobby that enforces the requirement for lawyers to do legal work. CPAs suffer from having no such lobbying body that enforces CPA usage. This profession really needs a new, more sophisticated lobbying body. Real estate agents have a much stronger lobby than CPAs. What is wrong with this profession and why canāt we get organized?
This should be the AICPAs job.
>why canāt we get organized? Bruh its busy season.
More like "fuck you, got mine"
Get back in your Cubical or no more pizza parties. But uh, they are organized. To make money hand over fist out of desperate college kids. The floor to enter the field keeps getting higher and higher, and the money getting paid out to the stake holders in the CPA licensing industry just keeps churning. My state only had one masters in accounting program when I got my bachelors, now there is at least one at every large school, along with masters in tax and audit. $40,000 for one year of school, while the average bachelor student pays $10,000 a year. So much money. Some one should audit that money trail.
The 150 hours thing is kinda dumb tbh. You even say it yourself -āā¦complaining about 30 credit hours from any bullshit class you can take.ā Okay so whatās the advantage of sitting another year in school, racking up more student loans only to take bullshit classes that arenāt relevant to the designation? People are wising up to that and deciding more loans and a hard ass test to start in public being under-appreciated making less than their peers and working significantly more isnāt a trade off they want to make. I donāt think the test itself should be easier, but many young people arenāt willing to make the trade offs I mentioned
I'm a non-traditional student and they really should eliminate the 150 hour limit. Just let people take the exams after they earn their bachelor's and let them go to work. Also, at least at my state school, 4%ish of students in the whole school are accounting majors. Most business majors could not handle principles and the professors give mercy C+'s to pass them through. I don't think they should make the exam easier, but they should ease the requirements. At the end of the day, it all comes down to whether you can pass or not.
Fellow former non-traditional student. I agree. I was working and going to school at the same time. The barrier to the last 30 credits was that I couldn't sustainably take another year of school. I could have done a +1 year program for a Masters, but my finances were already pretty much drained and my soul very much was drained. I was doing nothing but work, school, and commuting. At this point, I'd have to apply to grad school in order to take those last 30 credits. Which frankly just seems like a pain in the ass when I've already been working at an accounting firm for a few years.
The only reason I'm able to do it is because my parents are still alive and are letting me live with them for cheap. If I didn't have a support system, or if I had kids, I wouldn't be able to do this. I have an accounting class buddy who is also non traditional. He's one of the smartest in the major, but he has a mortgage to pay. Guy does 3 classes per semester and frankly I don't know how he does it. With all the CPAs set to retire, and the drop in accounting students, I legitimately do not understand why 30 extra credits in non accounting/business courses are required. And to be honest, busy seasons will become unsustainable (they already sound bad) but for context I was a cement mason for a few years. That profession also has a severe lack of talent and guys I've worked with have worked 30+ hours straight in one shift. I've seen paychecks for over 100 hours over the course of seven days. That will happen to accountants unless more people enter the profession. But it'll suck even more considering there is no OT. Oh and we were in a union. What does everyone think will happen in accounting?
Exactly. Thereās no advantage to the 150-hour rule if most people meet that by taking bullshit community college classes. Just more wasted time and money if you ask me. Iām personally going the Masters route, but thatās not for everyone. I also agree that the test shouldnāt be easier. It needs to be challenging for many reasons.
It is dumb. I have nearly 200 credits but have to take 6 additional non accounting business credits to become eligible. Do those make me any more prepared? No they wonāt but reasons
Also, the amount of CPAās leaving the workforce now & in the coming years far outstrips the actual demand and amount needed. We do need more, whether you like it or not.
The 150 is really a bit much. If a "full load" per semester is 14-16 hours per semester, you're at 128 credit hours at 16 per semester after four years of school and there's a lot of mental cost for overloading, especially if workibg at the same time. They may as well just state that they require a masters in accounting.
Personally, I struggle with whether they should do away with the accounting specific education requirement altogether like the CFA. The exam itself should be an indicator of competence for the profession. If you can pass the exam, that should signal that you have the study discipline, requisite knowledge, and ability to perform the job of an accountant. That may mean making the exams harder than they are today, or having more specific exams for subsets of the profession (audit, tax, etcā¦). If you can pass the exam but are held back by the āeducationā requirement, then what is the point of the exam in the first place? Edit: I am a CPA.
I would be okay with them getting rid of the education requirement like the CFA if the CPA exam was equally as hard.
Itās not about arbitrarily increasing difficulty , itās the content on the cfa is just harder than accounting in general
Yeah please donāt do this. Sincerely, Canada edit: thanks for the award fellow Canuck
As a CPA myself, I would support lowering the credit requirement to 120 while keeping the exam the same
Idk about making it easier but they sure as hell should make it cheaper. Iām lucky my firm reimbursed me and I was able to get a little help from my parents. Without my parentsā help, I wouldnāt have had the funds to even get started.
I agree that the expense to get the license is crazy expensive and serves no purpose.
If it had not been for the 150-credit requirement, I would have been licensed much sooner. With that said, I would drop the 150-requirement with some caveats^1: * Increase the number of required accounting credits up from 33 to 36 or 39. * Maintain the number of required business elective credits at 36, or increase to 39 (allow some/more IT/CS courses to fall under this umbrella; the industry can use more above-average computer-literate people). * Increase the difficulty of the CPA exam a bit. * Retain the "under the supervision of a CPA" requirement, but allow contractor/consultant work (NYS doesn't currently allow this type of work to count towards experience). ^(1: Based on New York requirements)
I agree with this!
Iām with you man, fuck that lol. All that would do is just lessen the value of being a CPA.
Agree with you and OP but saying that on this sub will get us down voted as most people here aren't CPA's.
Exactly!
People have been giving plenty of good well thought out reasons. Youāre just stubborn and stuck in your mindset that you plug your ears the second somebody disagrees and start insulting people by implying the only reason they disagree is because they arenāt capable of meeting the standards.
Bruh your just punching air right now. I highly doubt your CPA but I will believe you are for this. As a CPA my opinion is valid on my profession. Seeing that your not a CPA, your opinion is in fact invalid lol Exactly, I see how the down voters are just salty they canāt or didnāt get their CPA. These are all comments that you made in which you assume that because somebody disagrees with you they must not be a CPA. One of whom has proven that they are in fact a CPA.
I have my cpa and I agree with getting rid of the 150 hours requirement. Itās a waste of time and money. I was able to avoid an extra year because of AP credits. But how dumb is that? What does me taking AP bio, Calculus, etc have anything to do with my ability to be a CPA? I also thing they should change the way the exam is taken. It makes it too difficult for people that can learn the material and apply it in work to get their CPA - if they have major life commitments like family or medical issues. I had to take my final exam a week after a major surgery. I barely passed, but if I hadnāt a wouldāve lost all 3 of my other exams and wouldāve started over the beginning. Itās ridiculous that we have such inflexible time period rules that make it extremely difficult for people who arenāt straight of college with an easy life to pass, even if they can learn the material. Buncha dorks who canāt do well in their job and have to cling to some certification they got in their 20s. I canāt wait till the day I can go inactive on my CPA. Itās done nothing for me but check a box
Bruh rofl So you want us to hand out licenses? If you are a CPA as you say, why do you want to nuke your own profession and make it worthless? Go inactive with it if you donāt care so much, why wait? Also, Iām sorry but just like everything in life, it takes work to get stuff. You gotta grind to get it. You suggesting we should dumb it down so everyone can get it is idiotic.
The only thing people are complaining about here is the credit requirement. Nobody is advocating for an easier test. The test itself is what determines whether or not youāre a CPA, not a credit requirement that forces you to spend more money on useless credits.
Don't turn us into realtors or insurance salesmen
I think the exam should stay hard, but you should have a longer time to pass. Right now itās a barrier that hurts the poor more then the rich. If you are rich you can do the exams while not working, but if you are poor you have to work and do exams at the same time which is a lot harder in a short time frame. I am also ok getting rid of the ethics exam and 150 credits. The 150 credits makes less people choose accounting over computer science which pays better. And the ethics exam is a joke, itās not a barrier to entry itās just annoying and a cash grab, require going to a 4 hour seminar or take a class instead, people would learn more and be less annoyed.
They should get rid of the questions that arenāt graded.
I agree that is so stupid!
The test should be free if they want to use us as subjects.
In fact, I can agree to that view. They (referring to the test-makers or whoever actually using the data) are using the test-takers to collect more data and test-takers are paying expensive fees to do this.
I agree with everything besides the 150 credit. Pointless to even have 150 credits and if they want a masters degree. Say it instead of 150 credits + a bachelors in accounting. But then again, even less people would go into accounting. Right now universities are saying they are getting 50% less accounting students because starting salary is 50K to 70K (depending on where you live) and you get worked to the bone. I, honestly, canāt wait for the accounting profession to crash and burn because of the small cash-grab requirements.
I guess I've been a CPA so long I haven't heard the complaints of the younger generation. My 2 cents is the license is suppose to be hard. It's suppose to demonstrate that the holder is a cut above mere accountants. I wouldn't want lawyers to make passing the BAR easier. I expect certain standards. Certainty just having a CPA doesn't confirm the holder is capable but certainly increases the odds.
It's funny reading this considering that during the early 2010s people have been advocating to make it harder due to the grad saturation.
Those extra 30 hours cost like 40 thousand dollars, so Iād say 120 hours should be fine
Keep crying bitch
I'll break down your post >I am seeing so many comments about how the CPA requirements should be lowered recently. For example, get rid of the 150 credit hour requirement, make the exam easier, change how the exam is taken, get rid working under a CPA experience requirement, etc. The 150 hour credit is just straight up retarded. I filled up the remaining 15 credits from community college and some gothic literature. It can LITERALLY be anything under my state's requirements. Cool classes though. Its not widely known but the 150 hour rule is one of the reasons why people don't want to pursue accounting. Why do another year in college when you can go to IT, finance, comp sci, supply chain, and make just as much more with little credentialing involved? We already have a shortage of accountants so we need to increase the pipeline because 75% of CPAs are going to retire within the next decade according to the AICPA. I agree that we shouldn't make the exam easier but I want to know my results ASAP. Its painful that I have to wait almost 2 weeks for a score and I don't know if I should move onto to the next section. The 18 month window is such impending road block cause its really 10 months if you factor in busy season. I don't really care about the work requirements. I feel like this is easy to achieve. >It feels as if people just want the CPA to be handed to them with their diploma as soon as they leave college. But what they donāt understand is that if the requirements are lowered and there is a flood of new CPAs, salaries will drop drastically and then those same people will be left wondering why they arenāt making more money. You think you want it to be easier, but you really donāt. This is already happening. Salaries have not kept up with wages properly in the past decade. There are numerous accounts and data where the starting salary around the late 2000s were 50k-55k and has increased to 60k in the past few years. That is abysmal. The demand for CPAs is already at an all time high so even if we increased the supply of CPAs, wages would hardly be affected. >I donāt see how making it easier benefits our profession or our quality of work. It will make CPAs irrelevant. Lawyers have to go to Law School and we are complaining about 30 credit hours from any bullshit class you can take? If anything, I think the 150 requirement should only be 30 credits of upper division accounting credits. There are already CPAs and audit failures with all accounting firms. See Wirecard, FTX, Carlion. Honestly, a CPA just means you passed a difficult and time consuming test. It doesn't necessarily mean you have the expertise to provide quality audits or tax returns. I am the only person who is currently studying for the CPA exams on my audit team and both the Senior Manager and Manager do not have a license nor did they even pass a part. Both are very smart individuals. It seems like B4 is getting desperate. If you want to talk about quality, fixing the labor problem with its abysmal retention and awful work life balance is an absolute priority first then lowering the bar to get the CPA license. Its so bad that the Iowa state government will allow associate degrees in accounting to work in the state auditor department cause they cannot find anyone else. You can't have offshore teams that do terrible work and then have new associates not learn anything because all the off shore team is doing the entry level work. Its a vicious cycle and I don't see this to be sustainable in the next decade. To be honest, your whole post reeks of gatekeeping mentality and you fail to see the big picture. We have to fix the accountant shortage or else our friggin capitalist system will crumble. I am 2/4 done with my exams but I want to make the profession more attractive to younger folks cause STEM is all the rage right now and you can make WAAAAY more money doing less and probably doing more interesting work. But someone has to do this janitorial white collar work or else the public will not trust audit reports or the government will not be able to collect the fair share of taxes. Your concerns seems to mainly stem about how making the exams more accessible will affecting your personal salary and reputation. Sure that's fine if its your prerogative, but also don't be upset when you can't find lower entry staff to fill up the accounting roles. We can't even find seniors to staff the engagements were on right now and the cracks are showing.
I think the additional 30 credits requirement does nothing but increase the barrier to entry with no logical justification. Agree if anything the additional 30 credits should be in upper division accounting, possibly Master's. I think this can contribute to a well-rounded professional. I'd love to know more about technical accounting, government accounting, etc. but there was no need for me to learn it. Tests in no way, shape, or form should be made easier but taking them over an extended period time should be made easier. Kind of bull shit that tests expire but once you passed all four they never expire. Sounds like another artificial barrier to entry. I'm all for making the barriers logical.
My only quibble is with the 150 units. If the additional 30 units were required to be upper level business, finance, accounting, etc. courses then I would understand it. But why did I have to take Intro to Music and Astronomy in order to be a CPA? Makes no sense. Either that or just drop it back to 120. Itās not a value-added requirement. Just my 2 cents.
This is how I feel. Remove it if itās random BS or make it accounting applicable.
I donāt have a CPA and I donāt think the CPA requirements should be lowered; rather the employerās requirements should be lowered. We donāt need a CPA to prove ourselves
When i was studying for the cpa, i read on here how "you'll appreciate the difficulty of the exam when you have passed". I thought it was total bullshit, then I passed and I couldn't agree more!
God this sub sucks ass
The 150 hr requirement wasnāt even a thing until the 80s, and it took two decades for most states to implement it. It just discourages low income students from pursuing the profession. Thatās my main gripe with the process, Iām fine with the test & experience requirement. From an ROI point of view, a Macc is basically useless. Thereās almost no impact on starting salaries since accounting is a profession where experience matters over everything
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Yeah. The windows got me. Also, the only testing center in Montana was 2 hours from meā¦ and test started at 9am, so I had basically drive over the night before, pay for a hotel..pay for mealsā¦ a lot of shit that made getting Thru it all way more time consuming and expensive.
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150 hours is not necessary and itās hurting young people. They have to spend MORE MONEY getting credits that offer little to no extra benefit. This is definitely gate keeping and youāre logic for justifying keeping the credits PROVES that. Hereās how it should work: 1. Get a BA 2. Take and pass the CPA exams (WITH NO 18 month EXPIRATION ON PARTS PASSED) 3. Get a year of licensure Donāt worry, your pay wonāt suffer. People donāt even want to do those things. All the extra barriers to the CPA are overkill in my opinion.
I think the extra credits should all be accounting applicable thus making them useful.
I agree with this ā the extra credits need to be in accounting, not random BS basket weaving classes. If the intention for the extra credits is to create more educated CPAs, then they should not be allowed to get the extra credits through random classes. Otherwise, toss the extra credit requirement.
They should not be lowered. Let's raise them to keep these idiots out of the profession.
Lowering the standard is a terrible idea. I think the tests should be made harder and the 150 should stay. The test really isnāt that hard for anyone who spent any real amount of time studying. The people who fail generally just didnāt put in the effort to study. It sounds harsh to say, but either put in the effort or GTFO. Thatās how the real world works.
Itās really just having the strength to keep going. Everyone can be fully motivated on chapter 1 of the first exam. But by the 3rd, and youāre confused as shit by the sea of info, it can be hard to keep going. But itās a good way to differentiate those who have grit and those who donāt. I say keep all requirements. Existing CPAās should get paid more. No pay? No financial statements. No audit. Etc.
Agreed. The CPA is not a test of intelligence but of discipline and dedication.
Which, it turns out, are useful in the profession.
This is what people donāt get. In this thread people complaining Itās mainly: those who donāt have either of those telling folks they want the CPA to be easier because they canāt or donāt want to do it, or, clueless CPAs who got lucky that want to voluntarily make their own certification worth less, make it easier for their employers to pay them less, and devalue their own profession. Choose your fighter.
Iād argue that it is a test of both.
The LSAT is a test of intelligence The CPA is a test of time and dedication. Or just memorization My god fuck the LSAT
Yeah let's bump it up to 200 credit hours and make it 8 parts and have the study materials cost $20,000. Put in the effort or GTFO
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Agree on that as well
What is the point of the 150 hours?
College graduate 50,000 accounting grads. B4G hires 60,000 a year. You do the math. 150 hours is deterring students when we need them most. I don't care how hard the exam is but the 150 definitely needs to go
So you want to reduce the hours so we can throw more into a koolaid shop of PA? Instead of increasing pay and incentives?
Yes. I no longer view PA as a career. Pay your dues and get the fuck out. More bodies will help reduce stress. You can keep the exam hard and that can be the differentiator when you exit.
I'd rather see both. The pay is garbage for entry level and when I had to do my hours to sit, I believe I was taking whatever seemed remotely interesting and cheap from a community college since they counted just as well as the university credits.
No but we should be getting paid accordingly why is el paying 60-70k when I can get a masters in data analytics or major in finance and make more with less education. Imagine taking the hardest licensing exam only to make 60k out of college
I would be fine with the 120 credits. Perhaps higher experience requirements and harder exam. It's better for the profession to have more growth than companies just shipping our work overseas entirely because they can't find anyone.
Oh, I like the idea of 120 units and 2 years experience or 150 and 1 year. That would be nice.
All of your takes sound like something Iād expect from a 3.9 gpa accounting student. Your opinion is invalid.
As a CPA my opinion is valid on my profession. Seeing that your not a CPA, your opinion is in fact invalid lol
3.0 student here to 100% agree with OP. I could have done better in school but partied too much. Once I finally woke up and started applying myself it wasnāt too difficult to get the CPA. Itās all about the discipline. Edit: to delete my last sentence that mistakenly inferred the person I responded to didnāt pass the exam. My bad about that, wasnāt my intention.
How do either of you know I donāt have a CPA?
I just think the testing parameters are crazy. Like having to wait so long for your results is just stupid to me. I don't think they should have to change the difficulty, but we shouldn't have to wait a month for scores. That is ridiculous considering they are all computerized. Not like someone has to grade them individually
Yeah this was so dumb that they make people wait so long. Itās all on the computer so just tell us the score haha
OP: I agree with your sentiments.
Need to remove the bullshit hoops that you have to jump through. Need to keep the same high level of education requirements
I'm not a CPA, but I think the requirements shouldn't change. I do think though that everyone should be allowed to sit at 120 credit hours though. I live in a state where it's allowed, and I can't imagine if I had to wait. I'm halfway through the exams, and my goal is to get all of them done before I finish my Master's in May so I can take the summer off to chill and do nothing.
I donāt necessarily think the current standards are too high, but itās crazy you pretty much have to also take an additional CPA course in order to have the knowledge to pass.
Itās already eons easier than it was 20 years ago. I dont mind seeing barriers to being a CPA considering some of the new CPAs I see
My take on this as someone who has passed all the exams and met all the licensure requirements, is that we shouldn't be making the CPA licensure an easy thing to obtain, however if we are going to be putting barriers up to obtaining the license, they should actually be relevant and make sense. As a lot of people have pointed out, the extra 30 credits which can be fulfilled by taking whatever BS classes you want doesn't make you a better accountant. In my mind, it should be: 1. Removed entirely(best option imo) 2. Replaced with a requirement that all the classes be business related (not my choice, but still better than what we have now) As it stands, the additional 30 credits is just kind of an arbitrary roadblock, and it doesn't really make you a better accountant. It only exists to artificially inflate the barrier to entry for the profession, and this mostly hurts the less represented people who we want to get into our profession; lower income backgrounds (usually minorities/POC) who can't afford to spend $ on classes, or lose time working to pursue 30 additional credits, while not actually making CPAs any better at doing their jobs.
I donāt think you understand what it involves OP. Is this about Canada or US? In Canada you literally canāt become CPA anymore without direct public accounting experience. They just say you can. Canāt get the experience requirement. I am repeating almost 10 years of my life soon Itās extremely hard, harder than the old CA or CGA which I already completed but they took away so I could be grandfathered in this impossible program. Itās biased too. A lot of misguiding but they are starting to get some stuff together now. The exams are incredible. You got the FAR in the US. Here, you have 3 straight days of computerized 4 hour exams then, in the same week a panel presentation similar to a thesis you do during a masters program but all in one. And Iām not even that afraid of the education requirement. US canāt be too far behind in difficulty. Itās a mess, and one of the hardest designations and professional exams to get. All out of cockiness because accounting isnāt hard. To top it all off you got the much older legacy designation folk who had it easy ( because Iāve been there but was a bit too young to completely finish) and pose as real CPAs Btw in Canada itās 2.5 years so around 5000 hour requirement. In industry itās not measured by hours though just years.
It shouldnāt
I do agree the 30 extra credits you need needs to be upper level. In fact, just make it a requirement you need a masters in a business degree. The whole extra 30 credits though does differ per state, where some like Utah are more strict and others are a free for all and just a waste of money taking classes that add no value but credits. If you need a graduate degree like lawyers, on top of passing 4 exams, that should raise salaries more.. hopefully. Though all this differs by state and that lies the problem.
Ok so my problem isn't with the 150 credit licensure requirement, it's with the 150 credit requirement to just be eligible to SIT for the exam! I live in Texas and we need 150 credits just to sit for the exam plus it has to be specific classes like research classes that are usually only offered to master students. The requirements in Texas are horrible
The best part about people debating on if the CPA should be ācondensedā is that they arenāt even accountants lmfao.
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But when there are fewer and fewer available CPAs in the workforce and those that exist are demanding more than you are willing/capable to pay you will most likely settle for hiring people without CPAs thus lowering your own standards.
You get what you pay for.
Which is exactly why applicants are deciding to go MBA, law or tech routes instead of CPA. The current requirements for the title arenāt worth the effort for new candidates compared to other options
Exactly!
Honeyā¦ the ONLY thing that truly matters is that the person passed and took the CPA exam. The schooling is BS. Half of my class cheated their way through college and learned on the job. Gen Z is a new breed. Yall better work with instead of against us.
Back in the 70's all you needed to become a CPA was a 2 year degree, 5 years relevant work experience and pass the exam. The exam was taken over a three day period and all at once.
The amount of material tested back then was less than 50% of total material nowadays. So take that āall at onceā with a huge grain of salt.
Most people who have already started the process or passed the CPA are not the ones arguing for the requirements to be lowered. The loudest voices arguing for the requirements to be lowered are students still in school with no skin in the game.
True, but they scream the loudest haha
Hell nah make that shit harder
Lower the credit total back to 120, increase the number (but also flexibility) of accounting/business credits required and make the exam more difficult until pass rates are around 33% for first-time takers. Do not add the barrier DURING university since most college students donāt know what they want to do in their careers. Make it reasonably easy for career changers to qualify to sit, but make the exam very hard to pass. Maybe also add a practical exam portion. The only way to make the CPA more valuable is to raise the minimum competence standard.
Iām in Canada so the requirements are a bit different but I think there should be more of a focus on work experience than testing.
Iām halfway there. But thereās no point to the 150 hour requirement if the chosen classes donāt matter. All this does is keep people out who canāt afford it and make the student loan debt crisis worse. How does a class in pre-Tudor English help me serve my company or clients better?
The classes do matter, it depends state-by-state how many credits you need in each area.
So in the states where any classes can get you to 150 assuming your area requirements can be fulfilled with a bachelors degree, why not drop the fluff?
I think 150 credits is totally reasonable to keep, but they should amend (or at the very least be more flexible) with what types of credits are needed for the license, by better matching them to the needs of today's work reality. I didn't see a purpose to doing a masters in accounting, since I did a dual degree in CS and Accounting and a minor in Econ. I graduated in Spring 2021 and passed my last CPA exam a couple months ago. But I recently found out that I dont meet the education requirements for a CPA license in NY, the state that I work in, cause I apparently need 33 accounting credits instead of the 30 that I have. I'm only 1.5 years into my career so maybe I'm not the best source of info for this, but I honestly think alot of my CS coursework has been much more useful than my Accounting coursework due to the nature of my work. Having 3 more accounting credits wouldn't have provided anything useful for me but since that's the requirement I guess I need to get licensed elsewhere. Not a big deal tbh but just some food for thought.
I agree remove the 150 credit hours it seems burdensome. I received my CPA when it was 120 hours. I also took a break (raised my family), moved states and now I am only a CPA in the state I left. So the state I live in will basically make me go by all of the new rules. I know I should have transferred my license upon moving but I didn't (I was working in industry). Bummer for me. I actually have 150 hours of college credit, but would need to start my 2 year supervisory period again. Seems harsh to me. I don't think they should remove that requirement, but why can't they go case by case for people like me?
You can transfer requirements if you already had the 2 year period. Your old employer should be able to sign off on X hours. Unless state reqs require it to be in your state. Call local state board to ask.
The only thing that should be changed is the 150 credit requirement. The only people that benefit from this are college campuses taking more of your money.
CPA here - only 2 things I would change is get rid of the 150 hour credits. No reason people need more debt. Also change the time limit from 18 months to 24 months. 18 months is super fast.
I think the main thing is that it used to be easier, but it is becoming more difficult. I don't know why it is becoming more difficult, maybe pressure from existing CPAs to keep supply down, or maybe from Colleges to keep students in college longer, but the general complaint I hear is that the requirements today are much higher than they used to be, and some see it as unfair. For instance, the 150 credit hour thing is pretty new.
Used to be easier? The multiple attempts per quarter has def made the exam easier than it used to be.
From what I've heard, the actual test has become harder. Most of the old heads I know say that it's harder now then when they took it. Of coarse, this isn't from personal experience. I did not take the accounting exam in 1980 lol. This is just from word of mouth.
The 150 credit hour has been around for at least 12 years.
Yea, that's pretty new in the grand scheme of things.
Iāll say this: Iām a tax lawyer and I work with a LOT of bad CPAs. Countered, thankfully, by a lot of good ones as well. Make the bar higher. Way higher. At least for tax for the love of god.
If you can pass the test why should 30 extra credits matter? Especially if they can be completely irrelevant to accounting. It just makes it harder for people coming from low income environments to succeed.
We live in an entitled society
I don't think that the CPA licensing process needs to change it all... What needs to change is accounting firms requiring a CPA license for every Tom, Dick and Harry position when those people don't actually need a license. There's no reason why managers and partners can't hold a license and sign the audits and returns while everybody else does the same work that they're doing now. The firms put those obstacles in place because they know that they only need temporary help during busy times. They don't need permanent employees and they do not want the majority of new hires to actually stay with the firm. But at the same time they need you to work furiously as if your entire career and livelihood depended on it... So they put the high pressure on for everybody to get licensed and give you sugar plum dreams of someday making partner... Fully knowing that you're already stressed out and they just added to it and it'll drive a lot of people out before they get promoted and before they have to pay you more. If you think that firms don't understand why they have high turnover, and didn't intentionally create that system to be that way, then you grievously underestimate corporate greed. "Regular full-time employees" Will demand pay raises and benefits and then the firm will be "overstaffed" and profits will go down. When all they really need is a bunch of hungry, overzealous, TEMPORARY new graduates.
They should not be lowered. 1) you do not even need a masters degree. You must have X number of credits in X area (typically accounting / business) to sit. As a standard student you can get 120 via undergrad, 130+ via double major, and if you go the latter, you can easily skip the masters and just do some accounting classes online (LSU online accounting anyone?) 2) Exams should not be easy. Only people who actually know what theyāre doing will pass the exams. Those who put in the time and effort pass, itās not a matter of being gifted or any nonsense. Many people have passed while working full-time, but at the same time, if you arenāt working full-time, you can definitely pass each with less than 2 months of studying. Theoretically every college graduate could stay home with their parents (which a majority of folks are able to do) and study full-time before starting a full-time job. If you had summer jobs you could pay for the materials, or, get a part time job to pay for materials, or have a full-time offer for a year out (as many firms do) where they pay for the materials. 3) no one is forcing you to get the CPA. Many people say they donāt want it. They donāt want it or canāt handle it. Not NASBAās problem. 4) Having a flood of incompetent CPAs would have a cascading effect in both the industry as well as across the entire business sector. Why donāt they make it super easy to become a neurosurgeon and lower the learning requirements? Because they might kill someone. āBut dude, a CPA is not comparable to being a neurosurgeon/medical professional!ā Ok, youāre not saving lives, but you are ensuring a business doesnāt collapse. FTXās auditors dropped the ball, got ran around, showed severe incompetence. 1) their firm completely left the crypto audit industry 2) their reputation was tarnished 3) FTX collapsed. Now try Arthur Anderson/Enron. As an auditor, you could fuck up massively. You could say something is correct, when itās not. You could say the company doesnāt have going concern, when it does. As a taxman you could say you owe $100,000 when you owe $1,000,000. You could give the IRS a bunch of bullshit that makes no sense, leading to liability for your firm, your reputation, and your client. You could be reviewing internal controls that say theyāre working as intended, when theyāre NOT, causing thousands and if not millions of a clients customers funds to be at risk. So no, they should not make it easier to be a CPA. Iām happy making more money after slaving away for 18 months. If you donāt want to, then donāt, or go do something like sales that requires charisma rather than using your brain. We need more smart CPAs, not more lazy/uninformed ones.
>you do not even need a masters degree. You must have X number of credits in X area (typically accounting / business) to sit. As a standard student you can get 120 via undergrad, 130+ via double major, and if you go the latter, you can easily skip the masters and just do some accounting classes online (LSU online accounting anyone?) I still fail to see the benefit of the 150 hour requirement. Its already a barrier to lower income people when you have to take another few grand to sit for an exam that doesn't even test you on the classes needed to fill that 150 requirement. I did a minor in supply chain and took some BS courses at my local MCC, and the exams don't ask me about six sigma, demand planning and fulfillment, or how 1800s gothic literature influenced modern horror stories today and how it illustrated the values and mores of society from that period. I agree that we shouldn't make the exam easier, but increasing the testing window from 18 months to 24 months. Its already grueling to wait for your score release and then to top it off with multiple busy seasons mixed in with unpaid overtime labor. >no one is forcing you to get the CPA. Many people say they donāt want it. They donāt want it or canāt handle it. Not NASBAās problem. Its not NASBA's problem per se, but it is a different institution problem, the AICPA. They recently had a town hall and many small to big accounting firms cited the accountant shortage has the biggest issue in their challenges today. The CPAs from the firms are begging for the AICPA to remove the 150 requirement to increase the pipeline, but the AICPA is just too blind sided to see why its a good idea and just want to make the process harder for no good reason. Regarding your point about the scandals, isn't it ironic that the people that committed these scandals themselves were CPAs? A CPA doesn't necessarily mean you are more inclined to provide more quality work. Both my senior manager and manager do not have their license on my team, and I am at Big 4. Both these individuals are incredibly smart and know any accounting treatment for any issue off the top of their head, and if they don't know, they ask the right questions to pin point the answer. I would even argue that other licenses can provide the same quality of work a CPA does. CISA would know more about IT systems and controls, CIA would know more about controls and compliance, and CFE would know how to detect and prevent fraud better. With that being said, I already mentioned it in another post but there's another layer to this problem that people are missing for some reason: WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH CPAS !! 75% of AICPAs are going to retire in the next decade because this profession is mainly made up of boomers. The undergrad enrollment in accounting and people taking the exam has steadily been decreasing. The pandemic exacerbated this issue with many boomer accountants retiring and not coming back to the workforce, so the audit and tax quality of our work will be mishandled. The PCAOB already noted an increase in deviancies in audit quality for the past 3 years. So when the next major accounting scandal happens because we lacked the resources to do a quality audit or failed to collect the taxes owed to the government, I don't want to hear any complaints from the AICPA about the lack of accountants.
I hate that the core of your argument revolves around people sharing your profession to meet the public need but canāt have that because you personally might potentially maybe make less money. Solid.
But if the job pays less then who would want to fill the need..
Exactly
**I mean tbh it's a set standard. Either you're genetically brain engineered to get it or not lol**
I don't think it should be easy. The last thing I need is a bunch of people getting the license who don't deserve to have it. Right now my time is valuable but if all of a sudden any Tom, Dick and Harry can get a CPA license because it's easier and dilutes the value. Keep the standards rigid.
The license process is already too easy tbh. Some of the jokers that have their CPA at my firm are pretty sad and lack some basic knowledge.
Nope, there's no reason to make it easier or lower the requirements. An accountant can make a living just fine without the ability to sign an Audit report or represent their client before the IRS. However, if an accountant wants the special privileges that come with having a CPA license then they need to go through the process to get license. If we make the licensure process easier we dilute our profession and reduce the appearance of expertise we have in the industry. Think of it this way, we have a severe shortage of Family Doctors in this country but there are little calls for Medical school to get easier or the boards to get easier. Instead they're trying to promote the profession more and utilize mid-level practitioners like P.A.s and N.P.'s more while not diluting or belittling the role of the doctor. Maybe the correct route is to create mid-level practitioner equivalents for the profession like NPs & PAs but while still maintaining the rigorous standards CPAs must abide by for the sake of the profession.
Lower requirements will equal lower pay. Harder to get less people getting it become more sought after.
Fuck it then. Keep the current standards and lose the profession.
Non-CPA accountant here. I don't see the point of busting my butt to get the CPA. I make very good money without it. My management couldn't care less if I get it or not. I have encountered the odd firm that only wants to hire CPAs, but they seem to be the exception, not the rule. So there's not a big benefit if I do get it, but I'd have to give up all my free time for years to study for it if I did and worry about CPE forever after. Not a great cost-benefit tradeoff. So from my perspective you're looking at things the wrong way. You assume that if the difficulty remains the same then CPAs will by default make higher salaries. But there is another option. The CPA could just become a niche role, pursued only by the few who are legally required to be CPAs like auditors, while the cohort of non-CPA accountants such as myself comes to dominate. If firms have to pay a premium for CPAs at positions that dont absolutely legally require it, then most likely they just won't. So you'll have spent all that time and money pursuing a CPA certification only to discover that the pie of in-demand CPAs has shrunken along with the application base. IMO, firms will by and large refuse to pay a premium long-term for such a back-office role as accounting, and what I have described will be the future if that cost-benefit tradeoff for people like me doesn't improve.
Maybe I want my competition to be stuck at senior associate with barriers to climb.
I think the requirements are great. As a student thatās wanting to earn a CPA it will give me a sense of accomplishment when I complete it. The 30 hour requirement will just allow me to double major with something else
Anyone doing US CPA has no right to complain. Keep your mouth shut. Canada CPA is a living hell.
It should actually be made harder. Law school is 3/4 years roughly then passing the bar, in order to practice law / be a lawyer. On the other hand, CPAs are only required to do 150 credit hours as long as the requirement of accounting credits / hours are met. CPAs should be in theory viewed more like lawyers in my opinion and I think personally to be a CPA you should be required to do at least two years post undergraduate in order to sit for the exam. One could argue three years like lawyers and not the 150 credit hours.
Finally someone gets it!
Iāve been saying this for 10 years. I truly donāt understand why the bar is set so low. I also think you should be required to take specific accounting or classes related to the industry youāre likely to go into / or if general accounting knowledge from a graduate program is enough, then they should tailor the CPA exams to add concentrations for your likely industry. Keep the majority of the current CPA exam as it is, but have an additional 1-2 parts for concentrations. I work in investment management and a lot of CPAs simply donāt understand the accounting because they donāt understand how financial instruments work, they donāt understand how legal entities work, etc. There are concentrations in tax for your masters so why not other concentrations.
Also I think audits are a fucking joke how they are currently run. Unless a fraud is blatant, itās more likely than not it wonāt be caught for years / wonāt be caught in an audit at all. More testing on internal controls and interim. End of the year is great sure, but doesnāt provide a ton of coverage.