Note: Debates continue throughout the profession on the best ways to address our depleted talent pipeline. Reasoned arguments and thoughtful ideas abound — including an AICPA pilot program called the Experience, Learn and Earn Program. While the MACPA has not taken a position on these arguments, it continues to seek insightful ideas to add to the conversation.

With that in mind, we offer the following opinion piece from Joseph Petito, Esq., a retired principal with PwC and former legislative manager with the AICPA who now serves on Maryland's Board of Public Accountancy. This is a followup to an earlier article that Petito wrote for our blog in March 2023. We encourage you to seek new ideas, keep an open mind, and play your own role in solving our pipeline challenges by rediscovering your passion for our profession and sharing it with others.

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In March, the MACPA published my opinion piece recommending the accounting profession consider experiential learning to help address concerns raised over 120 vs. 150 hours of education. Much has transpired since then, not the least of which has been the U.S. Supreme Court’s precedent-setting ruling on affirmative action. Though the full impact of this decision may not be known for years, one thing is certain: The loss of affirmative action will make colleges more expensive for minorities, especially black and Hispanic students. Only "financially viable" admissions will be left; it's expensive to admit low-income minorities. What this means for the accounting profession is that the very low number of minorities entering the profession, if left unaddressed, could become even lower.

For a profession already concerned about the loss of students, and particularly the lack of minorities, the Supreme Court’s decision should be a clarion call. Fortunately, the profession has already begun to take action, including considering two new pilot programs that seek to reduce the barriers to becoming a CPA by lowering the cost of a high-quality accounting education and enabling students who desire to do so to work as a means to meet their CPA educational requirements. The New Jersey State Board of Accountancy recently approved a "work for credit" program (which then enabled St. Peter’s University in New Jersey and PwC to partner and offer up to 30 academic credit hours through working at a paid, full-time job at PwC), and the AICPA and NASBA have collaborated on a soon-to-be-released "Experience, Learn and Earn" (or ELE) program that will enable students to work a reduced workload while completing up to 30 semester hours of credit through discounted online courses. Both programs will maintain license mobility and substantial equivalency.

Though not all aspects of the pilot programs have been released, both involve entry-level associates who have a baccalaureate degree and accounting concentration. The St. Peter’s / PwC program, according to PwC, covers up to 30 credit hours of “accounting, tax, data science and organizational strategy” through “hands-on” client work for which St. Peter’s grants academic credit and for which PwC pays St. Peter’s. The cost per credit hour per student is undisclosed. Should a student need to pay for the St. Peter’s program themselves — for example, if a firm other than PwC offered the program without covering the cost — presumably the student could use their full-time associate salary or obtain a loan. Given the uniqueness of the program and the fact that a student would be in the fifth year of their education, a loan may be difficult to obtain or the student may be reluctant or unable to add to an already high loan amount. As a result, the applicability of this program outside of a firm which can afford to pay the tuition is likely small.

The AICPA’s ELE program has offered to price its tuition at “less than or equal to” the average cost per credit hour of community college, estimated at $150 per credit hour or about $4,500 for a full 30 hours of credits, making it very financially attractive, though it has yet to identify the educational institution(s). The program will be offered through online classes and include “topics based on skills and competencies first-year hires need.” The ELE will begin in the fall with up to 1,000 students.

The other difference between the two programs is that the first-year staff using the ELE program are to be part-time employees, at least initially, with a reduced workload to accommodate taking the online academic classes. They are to “work flexible hours for commensurate pay,” according to the AICPA. The disadvantages include the individual potentially earning only a partial entry-level associate salary out of which the individual may or may not have to pay tuition and loan arrangements, depending on the firm that hires them. It’s also unclear whether benefits such as health care and retirement / 401(k) plans would be offered due to the individual’s work status. This would most likely depend on how much their workload was reduced, the trade-off being more time spent working, less time to accomplish the academic work and thus the longer the program. Reduced workload employees also typically do not have the same career opportunities as full-time employees nor seniority, putting the individual at a disadvantage with their peers.

While the pilot programs are a great start, it’s the author’s view that unless the costs of the additional 30 semester credit hours are reduced to near zero for the student and employer and the employment can be on a full-time basis, any type of work-to-learn program will not be widely used and useful, especially for economically challenged students, including minorities. One way to accomplish these objectives, which is not used by either pilot program, is to remove the 30 hours of experiential learning from the costly academic "tuition" environment. This will lesson the academic overhead and lower the cost of the overall program. For example, experiential learning "modules" can be created outside of an academic institution, though they could have the same academic rigor as equivalent in-class or online learning.

In order to enable individuals to be able to work and be paid full time, the learning for which they are receiving academic credit must be embedded within their work, as is done with the St. Peter’s / PwC program; the student’s work qualifies for the education. An experiential learning program derives its learning from hands-on work. Studies have shown that such learning complements and enhances traditional academic learning and motivates students to continue with their education. Finally, it is crucial that as part of the experiential learning process, individuals are being prepared to take and pass the Uniform CPA Examination — not through "test preparation"-type programs, but rather by learning that is embedded in their work and enhances their understanding of fundamental accounting skills, data analysis, analytical thinking and reasoning, and communications. If we fail to bring the individuals in these programs into the CPA profession, we will have failed the profession.

To satisfy state accounting regulators that such an experiential learning program is equal to or better than learning obtained through a classroom setting or online courses, and to maintain mobility and substantial equivalency, the experiential learning could be "accredited" through exam-taking by an accredited entity or another means that is less costly than a traditional academic setting. Incentives could be offered to accredited academic institutions to add experiential learning credits to a student’s transcript — for example, by providing the experiential learning modules to the academic institutions with the caveat that the modules be offered to their students at low or little cost, thus keeping the students in their systems.

In addition to opening the profession to a larger and broader class of students, an added benefit of an experiential learning program that utilizes full-time employment is that if this model becomes widely adopted, the "experience" aspect of the CPA’s "Education, Examination and Experience" requirements will be greatly enhanced and more standardized for many new accountants. For a profession known for the rigor of its entry examination and education, there has been a surprising lack of rigor applied to the critical experience leg of the accounting "stool." Since substantial equivalency and mobility are valued, this should be a great asset to obtain.