HoustonChronicle.com -- Managing Your Money
May 30, 2005, 12:55AM
Revenge of the CPAs
Bean counters have become college rock stars
By ROSEMARY BARNES
San Antonio Express-News
Accounting is now the "it" field, the rock star of college majors.
Bean counters have finally arrived. The bottom line is: They've got the jobs.
Unlike in most professions, accountants, both new and seasoned, can call all the shots when looking for work. This nerdy, boring job of number crunching — as it traditionally has been perceived by outsiders — has become the most in-demand profession in a span of only three years.
The unexpected rapid increase in demand for accountants comes in the aftermath of such high-profile corporate fraud cases as Enron and WorldCom.
The Sarbanes-Oxley factor
Most of the increased demand has resulted from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which created tougher accounting and watchdog standards for public companies — and more work. The too-comfortable relationship between Enron and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, sparked the new regulations.
Both experienced and newly minted accountants are being wooed with big salaries and a multitude of perks, including concierge services and generous bonuses from corporations, the Big Four public accounting firms and the smaller, community-based firms.
Universities around the country are seeing more accounting majors than ever before, but the required five-year curriculum has slowed the production and recruitment of accountants and auditors.
Rather than being turned off on the field by all of the negative publicity surrounding the string of accounting scandals, college students have flocked to it.
A family history
Erin Lecce, 27, knew she wanted to be an accountant when she was a middle school student. That's when she started working part time for her father, San Antonio accountant Reed Smiley.
Add the fact that Lecce's grandfather was a certified public accountant and it sounds like she was genetically predisposed to the field. But not really. Lecce, who has worked at Carneiro, Chumney & Co. in San Antonio for two years, said she simply loves the profes- sion.
"I always enjoyed math," said Lecce, who graduated from Texas Tech in 2001 with bachelor's and master's degrees in accounting. "When I first graduated, there weren't that many accounting jobs available because the economy had taken a dip. But pretty soon, the spotlight was on corporate scandals, and accountants were in big demand."
Today, competition to hire new accounting graduates is intense. Most accounting majors have jobs with firms a year before they graduate.
"This field is so hot right now that students who were majoring in other business areas, like finance, are deciding to become accounting majors," said J. Richard Dietrich, chairman of the accounting department at OhioStateUniversity. "Having a job that pays well when you graduate is a huge attraction to students."
Recent education and employment statistics give a glimpse of the expanding job market for accountants.
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, there has been a 10 percent to 20 percent increase in the number of accounting jobs. New graduates can anticipate starting salaries from $43,000 to $48,000.
In the 2002-03 academic year, nearly 50,000 students received bachelor's or master's degrees in accounting, up 11 percent from the previous year and the largest number in seven years, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
In the last three months of 2004, the most recent data available, the number of people working as accountants rose 2.4 percent, nearly five times the rate of increase of all other jobs, according the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Leaders in the accounting field have been surprised not only by the jump in demand for accountants but by the increased interest that college students are showing in the accounting field.
Trying to rebuild faith
Sarbanes-Oxley was intended to build the public's faith in the accuracy and integrity of annual corporate financial statements. Whether it will instill more confidence in corporate America remains to be seen. But its immediate impact has been to create new business opportunities for large and small independent firms throughout the country, thus heightening demand for accountants and auditors.
"After Enron and WorldCom, educators like myself were afraid that accounting was getting a bad name and that students would avoid it as a career choice," said Petrea Sandlin, an associate professor of business administration at TrinityUniversity in San Antonio.
"But those scandals made students look at accounting in a more favorable light. There was bad accounting in all of these scandals. Students knew they could help prevent such scandals in the future."
Out of the shadows
For decades, accountants operated in the shadows, while attorneys and investment bankers thrived during the IPO and dot-com celebrations of the 1980s and late 1990s.
"Sarbanes-Oxley makes huge demands to enhance the integrity of audits," said Robert Bunting, chairman of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, a New York-based industry organization.
"It's been a double whammy for the industry. Companies are hiring one team of auditors for external documentation and a second team of auditors to examine internal controls. That's a lot of work," Bunting said.
Also, national accounting firms are allocating more time and energy to their larger audit clients, referring assignments from smaller corporations to independent, regional accounting firms.