The country faces a shortage of accountants as current accounting professionals leave and fewer students enter accounting majors. 

Barriers to becoming a CPA include a requirement of 150 credit hours – 30 more hours than a bachelor’s degree requires, lower starting salaries and even the perception of accounting as boring, according to an accounting talent strategy report by the National Pipeline Advisory Group.

“I think it is a hurdle that some students don’t want to go through to get the license, but they still want a job,” said Kraig A. Jones, teaching associate professor of accounting at Washington State University Tri-Cities’ Carson College of Business, noting that the required credit hours almost add up to a master’s degree.

Renae Stout, senior associate professor of accounting at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, said that the shortage of accountants affects not only the profession, but business in general, from being short-staffed and overworked to making mistakes in reports, to decreased confidence in the business.

But becoming a CPA isn’t necessary to become an accountant or get a good job, and local programs at both WSU Tri-Cities and Columbia Basin College offer paths to accounting jobs.

Other paths to accounting

Neither WSU Tri-Cities nor Columbia Basin College have a four-year accounting degree. They have programs to help make the field of accounting more accessible to those who aren’t pursuing a CPA. 

CBC offers a few different programs that align with different career or education goals, Stout said, including a one-year certificate and a two-year Associate of Applied Science.

Students learn basic accounting theory, more practical classes in QuickBooks and taxes, and an overview of business which could include marketing or management classes. 

Some firms are reevaluating their education requirements to become a staff accountant, shifting from a bachelor’s degree to a two-year degree, Stout said.

In the 2023-24 academic year, two CBC students took the one-year certificate, and 17 students were in the AAS program. More than 400 students were enrolled in accounting classes that year, which are taught by two full-time faculty members and three part-time adjuncts.

CBC students also can pursue a business transfer degree to help them get to a four-year college – that’s what many students do if they want to be CPAs, Stout said. Currently, 29 students are pursuing that degree, which can include those planning on a bachelor’s degree in accounting. 

The college is working to update its two-year accounting degree to make more of its courses transferable to a four-year college. They’re also planning to work with four-year colleges that agree to accept the coursework of two-year accounting degree transfer students, Stout said. 

WSU Tri-Cities also allows students to start their courses in person and later transfer to the WSU Global Campus, an online program, to complete their degree.

“If a student knows they want to major in accounting, they probably go to Pullman – they go to a school where they know they’re going to be able to finish there,” Jones said. “But we do get students (that) come here, they take an accounting course, they decide, ‘Hey, I really like this.’” That’s when they’ll transfer to the global campus.

Another option at WSU Tri-Cities is the Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration, which offers elective courses in accounting. 

The program is “a good bridge because it’s going to help students get good business jobs where they need accounting skills, but they don’t need the (CPA) license to do it,” Jones said.

He’s one of five faculty teaching in the program, and other faculty cover areas such as management and marketing. Five or six adjuncts also are involved with the program, which enrolls about 75 to 80 students. 

A small number of students, about five or six, transfer to WSU’s global campus to pursue accounting majors, estimated Kate McAteer, vice chancellor of academic and student affairs at WSU Tri-Cities. 

Work opportunities

Part of these programs’ emphasis is on helping students find good employment. 

WSU Tri-Cities has internship options with major employers like the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Hanford contractors, and they’ve found that there’s a need for students with accounting skills for certain positions.

The positions don’t require a CPA, “but they need that finance, those accounting skills to be able to do these jobs successfully,” Jones said. 

That’s the main reason behind a plan to expand WSU Tri-Cities’ accounting course offerings. Two new courses will be added in spring 2025. By giving students more accounting course options, they’ll be better able to meet the needs of employers. 

Columbia Basin College’s programs have employers in mind, too, and officials are working on changing the two-year degree to help students become more “hirable,” Stout said. 

That includes working on soft skills like presentations and human relations, as well as learning to use programs such as Outlook and Excel that students would need to use at a business. 

Those aspects “are all integrated in there with the goal of making students ready and competitive in the job market and what the profession is looking for,” Stout said. 

She said that while “it’s easy to teach the accounting theory … it’s really a lot of work and hard to teach your employees how to be able to write a good email or how to use Excel.” 

It saves employers time if employees come in with that knowledge already in hand. 

CBC will also try to match students with local internships. Stout said those might include work with Tri-City businesses like CliftonLarsonAllen, PorterKinney and McCurley.

Many of these internships can become full-time jobs after students graduate, she said. 

Renae Stout, senior associate professor of accounting at Columbia Basin College, uses stories to help students engage with accounting.

| Courtesy Renae Stout

Telling stories

Aside from the barriers presented by CPA requirements and employment, the common perception of accounting being boring or difficult still lingers. 

As an accountant for a manufacturing plant and later an auditor for the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Energy, Stout has been able to travel and learn more than most students might expect. 

She works to engage her students by telling them stories about her experiences to show them, “it’s not just sitting in front of a computer looking at numbers all day, you’re talking to people, you’re going out and learning new things,” she said. 

One of her favorite stories is from one of her own accounting professors who once used a ruler to measure a company’s vats of oil or another liquid to ensure they were telling the truth about how much they had. In the end, they discovered a false bottom. 

It’s stories like that, Stout said, that excite students. 

“It’s not actually that boring. It’s pretty interesting, and you can have fun. And so it’s just getting that message out there and undoing what a lot of even our pop culture has done where accountants are boring and nerds,” she said.