I don't agree entirely with Ed Ketz, but his article is food for thought. What Ed fails to balance in the article are some of the underlying long-term advantages of majoring in accounting and working in public accounting:

1. Auditing and tax careers are stable in the sense that, when the economy crashes and the other professions cut way back on hiring, auditors and tax accountant graduates are still in high demand. I take great comfort in the fact that our accounting graduates have job offers through the thick and the thin (the same cannot be said for our other graduates).

2. Accounting firms offer some of the best internships while students are still in undergraduate programs.

3. Auditing and tax client exposure can lead to executive-track opportunities that are often not available to other graduates. For example, one of our graduates (who was an audit manager on a medium-sized client here in San Antonio) became the client's CFO and took his senior in on the deal as the Controller. We have some computer science majors who became executives with start-up dot.coms, but those dot.com and other start-up company opportunities are fading while the accounting graduates still face opportunities of advancement with clients.

4. The client base in public accounting is relatively stable. Consultants are constantly sweating out landing new clients after their one-shot deal with existing clients terminates.

5. Some of the highest paying careers at the moment are in computer programming. But can you imagine being a computer programmer for your entire life? I admire those techie-types who have this aptitude and stamina, but many of our students who major in accounting have no aspirations to be computer  programmers for the rest of their lives. Generally, computer programmers have to go back to school to get an education in accounting or business to advance up the career ladder.

I think the students should have a balanced exposure to career alternatives and be warned that high starting salaries are not the major criteria for the best careers.

I don't know how to apportion "blame" for the decline in accounting majors in the U.S. at the moment.  I do think the five-year requirement is not necessary and is most definitely part of the problem causing that decline. I hesitate to sling arrows at the Big Five. The main reason we have had so many accounting majors in the past is that the Big Five hired in good times and bad times (when majors in all other business disciplines had very few job offers in hand). 

Until recently, public accounting was about the only startup alternative for our accounting graduates. Industry tended to seek accountants with public accounting experience and almost never made offers to new graduates. (I think Ed really misses the point on this one.) We have just faced some very good times in which non-typical job opportunities and starting salaries have created more competition in career choices. The demise of dot.coms demonstrates how non-typical the past decade has been in higher education.

-- Dec. 26, 2000

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