Options for Meeting the 150-Hour Requirement to Maximize Students’ Demand as Accounting Recruits: Have Things Changed

Abstract

Students have myriad options to satisfy the 150-hour education requirement for CPA licensure. We investigate the options for meeting the requirement that the students of today should pursue to maximize their demand as public accounting recruits. We are especially interested in examining whether recruits who pursue options that incorporate data analytics are in greater demand than other recruits. Our study is motivated by trends in hiring practices, most notably a growing demand for data analytics skills, that question the prevailing belief, based on prior research, that students can maximize their demand through a graduate degree in accounting. We conducted a between-participants experiment in which 191 CPAs in public practice indicated how actively their firms would recruit a student based on a set of attributes that varied only as to how the student met the requirement. Results support the prevailing belief that students can maximize their demand with a graduate degree in accounting. Results of further analyses, however, suggest that recruits with a graduate degree in accounting with a concentration in data analytics are in greater demand at larger firms than smaller firms. These results should be of interest to students and advisors in planning studies and administrators in evaluating programs.