Help wanted: tax and accounting educators.

• Author: Carr, Janice

A new crisis is quietly looming over the tax and accounting professions, and is occurring in accounting and tax education programs in universities around the country: a shortage in the supply of full-time tax and accounting faculty. Is the crisis real? How does it affect these professions? What can be done to correct the problem?

The Crisis

The problem is real. The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) estimated in a 2003 study that the gap between the supply and demand of qualified business faculty (including tax and accounting faculty) will exceed 1,100 by 2007, and will more than double, to over 2,400, by 2012; see "Sustaining Scholarship in Business Schools: Report of the Doctoral Faculty Commission to AACSB International's Board of Directors," AACSB International, 2003, p. 14 (AACSB Report), available at www.aacsb.edu/publications/dfc/ SustainingScholarship.pdf.

Another indication of the problem's seriousness is the difference between the number of accounting faculty looking for positions and the number of positions available. A large number of faculty and accounting programs conduct their initial recruiting and interviewing for tax and accounting positions at the American Accounting Association's (AAA'S) annual meeting. At the 2004 meeting, over 150 accounting positions were pursuing approximately 60 accounting faculty. However, not all those who interview for an open position are new faculty. Some already hold positions at universities, but want to relocate, for example. They are not adding to the supply, but merely rearranging it.

Other signs of the imposing shortage are showing up. Many accounting programs are finding it more difficult to staff their courses adequately and are hiring part-time adjunct or "clinical" faculty in greater numbers; other programs are reducing course offerings.

The Reasons

Two primary factors are causing the faculty shortage: first, fewer doctoral students are pursuing degrees in accounting than ever before; second, many accounting professors are retiring.

Reduced supply of new faculty: From 1994 to 2002, the number of accounting doctoral degrees awarded decreased from approximately 200 per year to only 86. Tax is being hit even harder: a 2003 American Taxation Association (ATA) survey reported only 23 doctoral students pursuing degrees with a tax focus and only four were close to graduating (although not all schools responded to the survey).

The reasons for the dramatic decrease in...