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Passed my last CPA exam!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
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Rising Star
I share your concerns that lowering the bar/requirements will not help with the quality issues that are becoming increasingly pervasive.
I think boosting compensation and raising client fees accordingly will help address the talent shortage. Lawyers and doctors require extra years of schooling, and they receive higher salaries than career paths that only require an undergrad degree. If we’re going to stick with the 150 hr requirement, compensation needs to be higher than career paths that only require 4 years of college.
Rising Star
… if you want to augment audit quality, give engagement teams more time and resources to do their audits.
Replacing onshore staff with India resources, adding in more and more admin work like stricter independence measures, cumbersome engagement staffing procedures, more and more planning steps and requirements. Multiplied by 5 engagements going on concurrently?
Let’s not blame audit quality on anything else other than firms trying to get cheap by moving resources to India and squeezing more and more from their people onshore.
I think the 150 hours is a poor way of filtering, since the extra year doesn't need to be accounting related. It filters for people who don't mind spending another year in school (so not hungry ambitious people who want to get their careers moving).
I think we would be better off getting rid of the 150 hours and making the exams and licensing process more rigorous.
lol I also double majored in accounting and finance. My minor was in history because I enjoyed it. I took maximum credits my entire time in college which is why I had plenty of room for “fun” classes.
Besides, I have the fundamental belief that college isn’t just for job training but rather to educate yourself into a well rounded person. My English classes ensured that I am a better writer than most of my colleagues. Yoga helped me with my mental health. History gave me perspective. Just because I find the credits useless for a CPA, my classes made me a better person.
People always say that the quality is an issue with getting rid with the 150 requirement. In theory yes but the 30 credits are not further education it can be just random classes. I do not see how that is increasing audit/tax quality in anyway. More in depth tax and audit credits and eliminations of some electives could help. But 30 online community college isn’t doing any good
The extra 30 credits does nothing to increase quality. I would rather see that extra time be work experience.
I think 5 years of college credit is stupid when school is putting those without a trust fund in debt. And you can do accounting or calligraphy with that 5th year if you got your accounting credits done in 4 years so it should be deleted. It also prevents you from starting work, saving, etc. It’s a frivolous hurdle.
I am very confident I could be a CPA, but cannot pay for another 2 years of school or take the time off working to accomplish a second degree. I have a bachelor's degree and 10 years of professional experience - I am a very competent person. I'm pretty sure I could kill that test, but the other requirements rule me out.
For anyone wondering why two years, I tested out of 21 semester hours of basic classes. Test credits don't count, so I am more like 60 hours away from qualifying.
I have a family and my husband is in college right now. I can't financially swing ANYTHING. Even when he's done a year from now and finally gets a job and we get to start digging out of the financial hole, taking one or two classes at night per semester would take me 5-10 years at that rate to get all the credit hours I need. It seems very impossible.
At the end of the day if all comes down to money. There are people that spend 8+ years then another 5 years to become a doctor because they know they will be well compensated. If they pay accountants well enough, it wouldn’t really manner if it’s 6 years or 10 years, people will come. At the end of the day, money talks. You want quality applicants, increase compensation.
In current times accounting, especially public accounting, is very much a last resort career. Changing the hours is not going to be that significant in attracting more talent