how to guide students into accounting

top five turn-offs and who they’d listen to.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

why would anyone want to be an accountant? long, grueling hours under green eyeshades, cranking a calculator in a back room, thinking nothing but numbers, numbers, numbers …

actual accountants know that such a description is not an accurate, let alone a fair, description of their work. the truth is accountancy is as much about working with people as with numbers. it’s an area of business that touches on all areas of business and even the welfare of families. it’s challenging, rewarding and can actually be exciting.

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the trouble is students have little idea what a career in accountancy is like. and those of ethnic minority, unlikely to have an accountant in the family or even the neighborhood, have even less notion of what an accountant does for a living.

new college demographics

research by the center for audit quality found that college and university populations have changed substantially. today, 52.9 percent of undergraduates are “students of color” (black, hispanic or asian/pacific islander), way up from 29.6 percent in 1996.

students are also coming from lower rungs of the economic ladder. over half – 56 percent – of all undergraduates are the first in their families to enroll in higher education. about a third of these “first gen” students are black.

these are people who want to get ahead in life with a productive career. in high school, 59 percent of blacks and 60 percent of hispanics already intend to pursue a degree in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.

but then something happens. only 44 percent of black and hispanics (and 40 percent of whites) actually choose a stem major. of the 28 percent of blacks and 20 percent of hispanics who intended to major in business, only 17 and 14 percent, respectively, actually do so.

learning something wrong

the drop-off seems to indicate that something about the educational process causes students to lose interest in business and stem majors. as they begin college, 89 percent of students of color are open to majoring in accounting. four years later, only 2 percent graduate in that field.

somewhere along the line, white and minority students come to see a disparity between their career goals and a career in accounting. those goals are:

• fulfillment: enjoying work and the learning and growth that come with it; finding purpose and a sense of achievement in work
• stability: income, benefits, job availability, necessary certification and education
• culture: corporate culture, work/life balance, workplace flexibility, travel opportunities

asked what was very important about career choice, all students ranked “long-term earning potential” seventh.

here are the top priorities

the percentages for black, hispanic, asian/pacific and white students were generally within two or three percentage points of each other.

#1 working in an environment that is welcoming to people of all races, ethnicities, backgrounds (about 75 percent for the minorities, 66 percent for whites)

#2 feeling confident i can perform the job well (about 70 percent)

#3 interest in/enjoying the work (about 70 percent)

#4 feeling like my work is valued (about 64 percent)

#5 opportunities for learning and growth (about 61 percent)

#6 work/life balance (about 60 percent)

#7 long-term earning potential (about 60 percent)

owning a business was an especially strong motivation for black (52 percent) and hispanic (41 percent) students, though only slightly lower for whites (37 percent) and substantially lower for asian/pacific students (28 percent).

hispanics were especially interested in careers that would impact their communities. the survey found that when hispanic students learned that accountants can help entrepreneurs in their communities build wealth, they became motivated to learn more about the profession.

what turns them away?

a career in accounting should satisfy all or most of the top career priorities. so what turns students away from accounting?

to focus in on the problem, the survey asked business majors why they chose not to pursue a major or minor in accounting. the answers varied quite a bit by race.

#1 concerns about skill set (blacks 44 percent, whites 34 percent)

#2 no interest in the work (blacks 30 percent, hispanics 49 percent, whites 43 percent)

#3 cpa license barrier (blacks 28 percent, hispanics 37 percent, whites 34 percent)

#4 higher starting salary elsewhere (blacks 14 percent, hispanics 18 percent, whites 21 percent)

#5 don’t want to work long hours (blacks 5 percent, hispanics 12 percent, whites 20 percent)

it’s the influencers

the survey concluded that the overall solution to all the above is influencers: professors and practicing accountants who know what the profession is really like. efforts by influencers will put more students, and more diverse students, in the pipeline to accounting firms.

 

posted on september 6, 2022