Undergraduate Accounting Enrollment Rose 12% in Fall 2024

Accounting’s Growth Outpaced Overall Gains for Business Majors

New data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows a 12% increase in fall 2024 accounting enrollment compared to fall 2023. The increase amounted to an additional 28,672 students.

Total undergraduate accounting enrollment for fall 2024 was 267,278 students, the highest accounting enrollment reported since fall 2020 (263,092 students) and just shy of the pre-pandemic fall 2019 enrollment (275,963 students).

“Strong accounting enrollment is heartening,” said Susan Coffey, CEO of public accounting for the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA). “The larger undergraduate student body presents a bigger opportunity to demonstrate to students the dynamic, rewarding career opportunities accounting can deliver.”

Coffey said the enrollment data will be critical for a host of programs and initiatives that stakeholders from across the profession are leading – from educators on college campuses to accountants volunteering to talk about accounting careers to high school students.

“There is much work to do to increase awareness and interest in accounting as a major and to sustain that interest through college and into the workplace as students begin their careers,” Coffey added. “This ongoing work will be even more critical in the coming years as demographic shifts reshape education and the workforce.”

Some of the pipeline programs underway within the profession include:

• The Center for Audit Quality’s Accounting+ campaign showcasing accounting career opportunities, which has reached 130,000 students in 3,000 schools across the country.

• The Accounting Opportunities Experience program – in November last year, volunteers supported by their state CPA societies delivered more than 1,000 presentations to 40,000 students touting the stability of accounting jobs and the broad array of available career paths, from entrepreneurship to a position in a public accounting firm or Fortune 500 company.

• Efforts by the American Accounting Association (AAA) in conjunction with the Future Accountants Sponsoring Organizations (FASO) to reignite interest in the major and the career path through innovations in the classroom, partnerships with high schools and community colleges and branding activities.

• The National Pipeline Advisory Group’s push for more balanced narratives about the profession, with almost 1,000 people signing the group’s Pipeline Pledge to connect with students and share their career experiences.

• The Experience, Learn and Earn (ELE) program, which was developed jointly by the AICPA and the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy to provide a less costly, more flexible way to meet final education requirements for CPA licensure.

• Initiatives by CPA firms, the AICPA, NASBA, state societies, colleges, state boards of accountancy, and others to provide greater support for candidates taking the CPA Exam.

• Various efforts to help address the time and cost of education and initial licensure through scholarships and exploring alternative paths to licensure, among other initiatives.

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s expanded Current Term Enrollment Estimates for fall 2024 also showed:

• The greatest increase in accounting enrollment year over year was at four-year colleges (14%, or +23,006 students).

• Fall 2024 accounting enrollment at the graduate level fell 2.8% from the previous year to 25,472 students. That continued a downward trend in graduate enrollment in accounting seen for the past five years. The combined undergraduate and graduate accounting enrollment figure rose 10.5% year over year in fall 2024.

• Total postsecondary enrollment across all majors increased 4.5% (+817,000) from fall 2023, with increases at both the undergraduate (4.7%, +716,000) and graduate levels (+3.3%, +100,000) As a result, post-secondary enrollment rebounded above pre-pandemic enrollment for the first time.

• Total business, management, marketing and related support enrollments increased from fall of 2023 by 5.6%, for a total 'business major undergraduate enrollments' of 2,289,935.

• The report shows a slight increase in undergraduate accounting enrollment as a percentage of business majors. Accounting represented 12% of business enrollment, which equates to 1 in 8 business students majoring in accounting.