Students Wait Longer to Take CPA Exam

A Kansas City Business Review article finds that although an increasing number of students are majoring in accounting, career goals and time constraints are causing many of these graduates to defer taking the CPA exam. The AICPA, National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) and Thomson-Prometric (who operate the test-taking sites) found that the number of CPA exam candidates has dropped 37% since the computerized exam started in April 2004. A possible explanation would be the movement to 150 hours; at the same time, a Robert Half survey (previously posted here) indicated that 71% of Chief Financial Officers surveyed found that accounting graduates are equally or better prepared than graduates ten years ago.

Our student accounting group had a guest speaker from the Becker CPA review program today. Without necessarily endorsing Becker vs. similar CPA review programs, the Becker representative was dead on when he recommended to students to take the exam at their first legitimate opportunity.