Here are some numbers that don’t appear to add up. Even as the accounting profession has endured a torrent of negative publicity, more college students are enrolling in accounting programs.
The enrollments are so strong that some universities face a problem: a shortage of professors to teach these bean counters.
Some schools nationwide report record numbers of accounting applicants for the fall semester, on top of strong gains over the past year. Most of the students know all about the accounting blowups spanning the globe, from Enron Corp. in Houston to Parmalat in Italy.
“What this tells us is there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” says Ira Solomon, head of the department of accountancy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “All the focus on accounting created a perception to students that accounting matters and is perhaps even sexy.”
College professors cite the Sarbanes-Oxley securities reform act of 2002 as a factor: It has created new jobs in the industry by extending auditors’ duties at many companies. In an uncertain economy, many students see an accounting job as one of the surest bets for employment upon graduation. The pay is relatively good, even as banking and consulting jobs have been tougher to come by.
The comeback of the accounting career occurs, however, as the number of business doctorates produced is at a 17-year low and universities struggle to recruit new accounting professors.
That leaves many wondering who will be left to teach all the new rules and regulations to the growing student pool. While many academic fields are suffering from professor shortages, the issue is more acute in accounting because of the pull toward high-paying public-accounting jobs.
Academics say the accounting scandals piqued people’s interest. They believe that Enron, for example, allowed accountants to shake their dry bean-counter stereotype and rise up as potential heroes.
“I don’t want to go as far as comparing this to the FBI during the Depression, but students definitely now see an Eliot Ness-like quality to accounting,” says J.B. Bird, director of communications at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, referring to the 1930s Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who nabbed Chicago crime boss Al Capone. The school runs the nation’s second-largest accounting program.
But some students say that the post-Enron jitters haven’t gone away.
“Accountants are more behind the scenes, and the only credit they do get is when something bad happens,” says Elizabeth Murphy, who finished a master’s in accounting in May from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
She “wavered back and forth on” entering the program. “I knew I had to think through putting my foot into this problem.” She will be joining the international tax division of Big Four accounting firm KPMG LLP in the fall.
Accounting surge
The number of accounting degrees awarded nationwide in 2003 jumped 11 percent from the year before, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. The University of Illinois, one of the nation’s biggest producers of accountants, saw a 66 percent increase in undergraduate accounting majors from 2001 to 2004, to 379 students. The number of 2004 graduates students surged to 93 from 11 in 2001.
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Edited by Lara Weber (lweber@tribune.com) and Kris Karnopp (kkarnopp@tribune.com)
