The Minnesota Society of CPAs recently opened a can of worms.
The society advanced a bill in the current legislative session of its state legislature that would radically change CPA licensure by allowing people to get the credential without having earned 150 hours of college credit. Specifically, it would create two extra paths, so that would-be CPAs could get an extra year of work experience, or take 120 hours of CPE, instead of getting their final 30 hours of college credit. (See our story.)
The goal is to help recharge the pipeline of people entering the profession and becoming CPAs, to boost the flow from its current trickle to something closer to what’s needed to meet the massive demand for new CPAs. It is certainly not the only initiative aimed at that: The American Institute of CPAs has launched a number, as have many other organizations and individual firms. Minnesota’s may, however, be the boldest, taking aim as it does at a core requirement of licensure in an attempt to remove what many people have claimed is the primary culprit in the pipeline problem.
The 150-hour rule is probably not the primary culprit (though it’s not helping); that’s more likely to be the fact that the technology and finance sectors started siphoning off huge numbers of potential accountants in the 1990s.
And playing with the 150-hour rule could have serious consequences: Many have noted the potential reputational hit the profession may take if it’s seen to be lowering the qualifications of its members, and both the AICPA and the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy have pointed out the potential havoc that could be caused to CPA mobility if states become a hodge-podge of different rules.
Despite the risks, the experiment is worth making in Minnesota, for two reasons. First, the pipeline problem is wreaking havoc on the profession, and seriously limiting its future. It requires bold solutions. Second, the state-based nature of CPA licensure offers 55 laboratories for trying those solutions out.
In May 1932, with the U.S. in the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt explained what would become a key characteristic of the New Deal: “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”
That spirit should animate accounting’s search for solutions: If Minnesota’s law doesn’t yield more CPAs, than try another experiment — and another, and another after that.
The profession is too valuable not to.
