Time commitment, relevance push people away from CPA Exam

Young accounting professionals who don't want to pursue CPA licensure cite a lack of time and professional need to do so, according to a new report from the Illinois CPA Society.

The report, “A CPA Pipeline Report: Decoding the Decline," utilized feedback from a survey sent out last fall throughout Illinois and to national stakeholders. The survey was geared toward accounting students, graduates, and professionals under the age of 35, including both CPAs and non-CPAs, garnering 3,102 respondents in all. Seventy-one percent of all respondents were 30 years old or younger.

While an overwhelming majority of the survey's respondents (88%) identified themselves as either being a CPA, in the process of becoming a CPA, or planning on becoming a CPA, those who said they were not actively pursuing CPA licensure gave, in part, the growing reason that they do not see the credential as vital to their professional lives.

“From this initial survey, we learned that individuals — who we believe should be future CPAs — are not pursuing the CPA credential because they feel they can succeed in their anticipated or chosen careers without it,” said Kari Natale, ICPAS senior director of planning and governance, in a statement. “They believe any value the CPA credential holds is outweighed by its lack of relevance to their personal and professional endeavors and the time commitment necessary to obtain it. They do not see the return on investment; they do not see their employers or prospective employers supporting or requiring it; and they see other credentials or specialties as being more valuable to their careers.”

Of the respondents who said they had started but not completed the CPA licensure process, a majority (63%) cited "workload time commitments" as their biggest discouragement. "Personal time commitments" (43%) and "overall cost of expenses related to the exam" (23%) were also contributing factors for the same demographic.

For the respondents who had not started, and do not plan to start, the CPA licensure process, not seeing a "value/relevance" to their career was the top reason cited (32%). Employers not requiring the CPA license (28%), not seeing a monetary payoff (28%), and a belief that "other credentials or specialties [are] more valuable" (28%) were other top reasons.

Concerning accounting students, the difficulty of the CPA Exam (54%), workload time commitments (54%), and a fear of failure (51%) were cited as the top challenges they felt they faced in pursuit of licensure.

"As the survey findings shared in this report show, reversing the CPA credential’s downtrend will not be without its challenges," wrote ICPAS president and CEO Todd Shapiro in the report's introduction. "The race for relevance is faster and more competitive than ever. Our hope is that the firsthand insight gleaned from our survey respondents (versus our own suppositions) will aid us in fulfilling our organization’s mission of 'enhancing the value of the CPA profession' and help all stakeholders in their efforts to develop effective strategies for both promoting the CPA credential and ensuring its sustainability and relevance for many generations to come."

For the full report, head to ICPAS's site here.