Teacher shortage - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

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For every Ph.D. graduate looking for work, there were almost three position available. In recent years, before the budget crises cutinto hiring, it was at four and five openings for every Ph.D. graduate. The industry is as close to a crisis as it has ever been in termds of having enough warm bodies at the top levelsa of education to train the flood of folkd now signing up tobe accountants. Without proper education channelsin place, finding a qualified CPA coulde prove more difficult in the future. “We’re overrun with students wanting to major in saysRick Elam, who holds the Reynolds Professo r of Accountancy at the . Mark Wilder is acutelg aware ofthe problem.
As dean of the at Ole Wilder had the task of fillintg not one butthree doctorate-level positionsw in his department this year, the singler largest recruitment year in decades. Wilder was recently names dean afteran 18-month interim period. With 11 tenure-tracjk faculty in the classroom, threw clinical professors andone instructor, the departmeng is at its peak. “This fall we will be as fully staffessince I’ve been here at Ole says Wilder, who joined the department in 1991 at age 31. “Itf was an unusual situation hiring three at one he says. “The market is tough for those trying to hirequalityt people.
” According to research conducted by Jim Hasselback, the at the , the numbeer of accounting doctorate graduates droppedd to 116 in 2007, down from 149 in 2006. It reachef a 16-year low in 2003 when the numbert of graduateshit 103. What’s more says Hasselback, who has tracked academia numbersfor 30-pluxs years, is the number of doctorate graduates who are in the U.S. on temporarty visas, meaning most will return to theithome country, further deteriorating the The situation is further compounded by the grayingg of the academic ranks in accounting Hasselback says. Of the current 3,642 accountinhg faculty with Ph.D.s at all 91 U.S. accountinvg schools that offer doctorates, or 44.
82%, are 55 and older. The average age of retiremenr is 63.6. “Retirement loomd big on the horizon,” says Doyler Williams, former president of the American Accounting Associatiom and chairman of the board for the Associatiobto . “It’s a big issued for us.” Hasselback, Williams and like Ole Miss’ Elam, who have watcheed the profession forseveral decades, aren’ t surprised by the current situation. Elam is former director of the School of Accountancy at the and spent six yearz at the American Institute of Certifiedf Public Accountantsfrom 1989-95 where one of the divisions he managef was Academic and Career Development.
“We knew 15 yearss ago that there was a problem withthe professorate,” Elam “I think the shortage has gotten worse than we thoughy it would.” Some, like Hasselback, predict that the only way out of the crisisx will be to lower the standards for a school to be AACSB certified, meanint fewer doctorally qualified facultyh on staff. The situation is so dire that at the end of July the announced a $15 million initiative aimed at reversingt the shortage of Ph.D.
accounting The Accounting DoctoralScholars program, funded by 70 of the country’ largest firms and some state CPA societies, will pay qualifiec students an annual stipend of $30,000 while they get theif doctorate degrees in audit and tax.