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Forbes
07-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How The CPA License Stacks Up Globally: Is The U.S. Behind?
Bryce Welker is a Certified Public Accountant and owns a portfolio of 20+ test prep websites, including the CPA Exam Guy. For years, I've helped CPA candidates across the country—many of them talented, hardworking and deeply committed to the profession. And yet, one of the most common hurdles I see isn't preparing for the CPA Exam itself. It's the 150-hour education requirement. At first glance, it seems straightforward: To become a licensed CPA in the U.S., you need to complete 150 college credit hours, typically one year beyond a bachelor's degree. But dig a little deeper, and it becomes clear that this extra requirement—originally designed to raise accounting standards—is starting to feel outdated in today's fast-moving global economy. A Rule Born In The '80s, Cemented In The '90s The 150-hour rule was first introduced in the late 1980s to elevate the accounting profession. The thinking was simple: More education equals more competent professionals. By the early 2000s, it was widely adopted. Then, every U.S. state required 150 hours for CPA licensure, although most allow candidates to sit for the exam with just 120. But that extra 30 hours often doesn't translate to better accountants. Many students meet the requirement by cobbling together unrelated credits. Sometimes they come from community colleges, online courses or even continuing education programs. They are gained solely to satisfy the rule and can cost thousands of dollars, potentially delaying entry into the workforce. I've found that for many candidates, especially those from low-income backgrounds or those changing careers, it's a major barrier. And the profession is starting to feel the effects. A Shrinking Pipeline And A Growing Push For Reform The CPA pipeline is shrinking fast. According to the AICPA, the number of CPA exam candidates in the U.S. continues to drop, and accounting enrollments at U.S. universities are down across the board. It's not hard to connect the dots. States are beginning to take action. Minnesota, for example, made headlines in 2025 when it passed legislation introducing two new CPA licensure pathways: a bachelor's degree plus two years of experience or a master's degree plus one year of experience. These alternatives will be effective starting January 1, 2026, and the traditional 150-hour rule will sunset in 2030. They're not alone. South Carolina passed a similar bill that goes into effect in June 2025, allowing CPA candidates to qualify with a bachelor's degree, two years of professional experience and a passing CPA exam score. Oregon also enacted a reform that offers the same experience-based alternative while preserving the traditional path. In total, more than a dozen states, including Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, Iowa, Georgia, Virginia and Utah, have introduced or passed legislation offering alternative routes to licensure. The common thread? Flexibility, not lowered standards. Even NASBA and the AICPA, long-time supporters of the 150-hour requirement, have acknowledged the need for change. In May 2025, they approved a proposal to add an alternative pathway to the Uniform Accountancy Act: a bachelor's degree, two years of supervised experience and passage of the CPA exam. So, How Do Other Countries Handle It? When I looked into how the rest of the world licenses accountants, the contrast was pretty stark. • Canada: CPA candidates complete a bachelor's degree and enroll in the CPA PEP Program, which blends coursework with practical experience. No 150-hour rule. • United Kingdom: Aspiring Chartered Accountants qualify through a combination of a degree and a structured training contract with a firm. The emphasis is on real-world apprenticeship, not extra classroom hours. • Australia: Candidates earn a degree, complete the CA Program and work in the field. Again, no fixed number of academic hours. • India: The Chartered Accountant path relies heavily on examinations and a multiyear internship period—no college credit hours required at all. Across the board, international systems place more weight on professional experience and performance than on academic benchmarks. Is It Time For The U.S. To Catch Up? The accounting profession is evolving globally. Firms are embracing hybrid work, integrating AI into audits and hiring from broader, more diverse pipelines. But in the U.S., our licensing model hasn't caught up. While we ask students to invest more money and time into academic coursework, other countries are promoting flexible, work-based models that are more inclusive and responsive to economic realities. I believe we're just at the beginning of a wave of reform. As staffing shortages worsen and firms struggle to fill entry-level roles, more states will follow Minnesota, South Carolina, Oregon and a handful of others. We may even see a national or international push toward standardizing and modernizing CPA licensure. For now, the 150-hour rule remains in place in most states. But the momentum is shifting. And as someone who went through the process, I'm optimistic. Because at its core, this profession thrives not by gatekeeping, but by cultivating talent, skill and integrity, however it finds them. Forbes Business Development Council is an invitation-only community for sales and biz dev executives. Do I qualify?
Forbes
05-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
When Accountants Become Analysts
Bryce Welker is a Certified Public Accountant and owns a portfolio of 20+ test prep websites, including the CPA Exam Guy. When I became an accountant, my world revolved around financial statements, tax deadlines and making sure every number lined up just right. I never thought that in the future, accountants would spend chunks of their week playing around in Power BI or Googling how to write a Python script. But here we are. Over the last few years, the accountant's role has shifted dramatically. We've gone from simply recording what happened to helping businesses figure out what might happen next. That change requires a new toolkit—one that looks a lot more like what you'd expect from a data analyst than a traditional CPA. This shift hasn't made headlines, but it's happening everywhere. Firm after firm, accountants are being asked to build dashboards, clean up datasets and help clients extract insights from their numbers, not just balance them. Tools like Power BI and Tableau used to be considered extras—something only big firms might invest in. But that's changed. These tools are quickly becoming part of the standard toolkit for accountants at every level. Some examples: • Power BI Or Tableau: These tools let you create interactive dashboards that update automatically and tell a story with data. • Excel Power Query: It's still Excel but turbocharged for cleaning and shaping messy data. • Python: Even knowing how to automate a few tasks, like scraping data or generating reports, can save hours. • SQL: If you're working with larger data sets or accessing databases directly, it's a valuable skill to have. And it's not just about the software. It's about how we think. In my experience, clients aren't just asking us to reconcile numbers anymore. They want us to help them make sense of the story behind the numbers—what's happening now, what's likely to happen next and how to get ahead of it. They're looking for timely, visual and actionable insight. A colleague of mine worked with a client who was hesitant to scale their business. They had that gut feeling we all know—the one that says, 'Better play it safe.' But after running a few simple forecasting scenarios, the numbers told a different story. The client actually had more room to grow than they thought. Seeing that data laid out clearly gave them the confidence to move forward. Within two years, their revenue had doubled. That's not just accounting. That's strategy. More and more, this is what businesses are asking for. Not just 'What happened?'—but 'What's next?' Accountants with data skills are becoming the bridge between raw numbers and wise decisions. We're not just number crunchers anymore. We advise. We translate complex data into meaningful decisions. This doesn't mean the traditional accounting skills don't matter—they do. Accuracy and integrity are still at the core of what we do. But the most successful CPAs I know today are the ones who pair fundamentals with data fluency. They are the ones whose clients turn to them not just during tax season but for problem-solving all year long. I never planned on becoming a 'data person.' But the more I leaned into it, the more I realized that this just might be the future of accounting. And it's not as complicated as it sounds. A few new tools. A curious mindset. A willingness to evolve. That's all it takes to turn a spreadsheet into a strategy—and an accountant into an analyst. Forbes Business Development Council is an invitation-only community for sales and biz dev executives. Do I qualify?
