Organization that created the accountant shortage forms “advisory group” to fix the accountant shortage

I remember back when I was an accounting major, the AICPA was pushing its 150-credit requirement to sit for the CPA exam.  It just wasn’t enough, apparently, to get a bachelor’s degree in accounting; another 30 credits were needed.  But instead of requiring additional courses like accounting theory, the history of accounting, accounting systems, or case studies in accounting fraud, for example, the additional 30 credits could be in . . . anything!

That’s right.  To get those extra 30 credits, you could, for example, repeat all of your college business courses and get an MBA.  (Those MBA courses will be almost completely redundant for an accounting major.)  Or you could just stay at the undergrad level a bit longer and pick up a second major or a minor.  You could even take a bunch of random phys-ed classes, music classes, or art classes in college.  Anything goes!

Of course, as I’ve explained before, when anything will satisfy the requirement, those additional credits aren’t really needed at all.  Those extra credits have virtually no value, and absolutely no practical value from an accounting perspective.  But on the flipside, they come at great cost to the individual student.  There’s the extra year of study, the extra year of expensive tuition, and the opportunity costs including a year’s lost income.  Given all of that, of course fewer people would pursue the CPA path.  (In five years’ time, you could even get a bachelor’s degree and a law degree instead.)

But don’t worry, the organization that caused this problem has now formed an “advisory group” to fix it, which, as my new favorite blog Going Concern explains, is over and above its “pipeline acceleration plan,” which was also supposed to fix the “talent” shortage in accounting.  The mission of this advisory group includes plenty of buzzwords, of course.  It will be comprised of “stakeholders” and even “leaders”—who isn’t a “leader” today?—and will develop a “strategy” that is “informed by” a variety of things, including “technology” and “surveys.”  And of course, any self-respecting advisory group, such as this one, will also proclaim its loyalty to “diversity” and an “inclusive solution”!  Finally, what good would the group be if its members weren’t “guiding the conversation”?  You simply have to guide the conversation!

Where do people learn this gibberish?  I think it’s in business school, which for me is a distant memory.  It’s things like this that make me glad I’m a lawyer instead of a cube dweller at a corporation or, worse yet, at an accounting firm.  

But given that the AICPA caused this shortage in the first place, why would anyone trust them to come up with a solution?  The Going Conern blog isn’t holding its breath: “The AICPA has cooked up yet another plan to do F*ck All to Solve the Accountant Shortage,” is the headline of its post.  Brilliant!

And you don’t even need to read the entire blog post.  The woman’s skeptical face says it all—although I think Going Concern’s skeptical cat face could have conveyed the message equally well.