Should Accounting Be Made a Professional School?

Accounting professionals are in very high demand. The nature of work in accounting is so vast an individual would have so many different areas of accounting to choose from. Accounting requires people who can work with complex business structures, computer systems, and financial analysis packages. Accounting work further requires an aptitude for mathematics and the ability to compare and analyze accounting data quickly. Accountants also need to have strong communication skills as they must effectively communicate accounting data to their employers and/or clients. The accounting profession also demands a high level of integrity and morality because the financial data prepared by accountants is used by business managers to run their business, and, in public companies, such accounting data is used by potential investors to decide whether or not to invest in the business. The work that is preformed by accountants potentially has the ability to be viewed by anyone and in turn is of significant value to who ever views it. An accountant must encompass an enormous amount of knowledge when it comes to performing their specific responsibilities. An immense amount of theory must be put into play when executing their duties as a professional. Accounting is a field that is the basis and the language of all businesses. Its curriculum, field diversity and demand are as substantial as those of other professional fields that require an individual to attend professional schooling to attain a specialized status in their particular field of designation. Clearly, it is of utmost importance to fully comprehend the amount of information entailed in accounting and to ensure that time and effort is spent on educating an individual of its significance.

The current curriculum that the accounting profession is based on entails acquiring a four year undergraduate degree from an accredited university with a major focus in accounting. Following the undergraduate degree, an accounting student would choose an exclusive area to specialize in and work towards a completion of an additional year in university to finalize the 150 credit hours required in accounting to be eligible to sit for the Certified Public Accounting board exam. The 150 credit hours are needed to obtain the required body of knowledge and to develop the skills and abilities needed to be a successful CPA. After the theory portion of the educational experience is completed, the most important aspect becomes practical experience. Practical experience is what drives the market. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants requires that either a one tier or two tier systems is required to obtain the CPA designation. This requires that relevant work experience is needed to become certified. This hands on experience helps to position a potential certified public accountant for a long and successful career. This professional curriculum is very detailed and requires a lot of individual steps entailed to reach the point of designation. If it were made into a professional school these segregated steps combined together would not only help to make things simpler, but it would allow the accounting profession to be similar to the curriculums of medicine, pharmacy and law. With an undergraduate degree, graduate theory and practice for four years and then residency/articling. With this specific pattern of education where theory and practice is combined together, it beneficially initiates really just the beginning of a lifetime commitment to continual education and development (AICPA.org), (CPA-exam.com).

The field of accounting is so diverse that it is an on going process of learning. Accounting being the basis of all businesses is so broad that there are a countless amounts of areas to specialize in, ranging from public, governmental, managerial, auditing, tax, and private. All these areas then branch off into other specializations; internal control, external control, internal audit, external audit, tax, accounts receivables, payables book keepings, etc. For an accounting student to pick a particular area to focus on is a difficult task considering the range of the field. Therefore implementing a professional school for this program would be beneficial for students to decide on a specific area. In medical school, throughout the theory session students rotate through the different fields and find a particular area of focus that interests them; internal medicine, family medicine, OB-GYN, cardiology, surgery, emergency, neurology etc. “It is so difficult trying to decide what I wanted to do, where I wanted to work, what kind of medicine I wanted to do. I knew I wanted a family, so I wanted to pick a field that was able to cater to my needs so after rotations in helped me decide that family medicine was for me” (Sood, 2005). In law school students volunteer and choose specific classes for their particular area