A recent New Yorker cartoon says it all: A woman looks longingly at a man sitting at a bar and tells her friend, “Being an accountant gives him that extra aura of danger.” Thanks to Enron, accountants have become more than stodgy number-crunchers. But for those who try to attract much-needed new blood to the profession, a reputation as the crooks who cook the books may be no improvement.
Drawing young people to the solidly middle-class profession has been an uphill battle in recent years. An American Institute of Certified Public Accountants study conducted in 2000 found that only 1 percent of high school students were considering majoring in accounting, down from 4 percent in 1990.
Trying to open up the field to non-traditional applicants, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst conducts a free weeklong summer program where minority students attend accounting workshops and visit firms like KPMG. This year, organizers worried whether discussing the scandals might turn kids off to accounting. But the opposite occurred.
“Their interest actually sparked, and they said ‘Wow,'” says Melvin Rodriguez, director of diversity in management education services at UMass-Amherst. “At their age, they don’t realize how important a field accounting really is.”
Officials at several of the state’s colleges and universities say enrollments in accounting classes are up this fall, but that may have more to do with accounting’s historically strong appeal during economic slowdowns. (Accountants are always needed, even in bad times.) Among some students on campus, opinion of the accounting profession has never been lower.
“[The scandals] made me feel as though accountants were like puppets, being told, ‘Cover up if you need to, but we need to look good to the public,'” says Christina Barrett, 20, a senior at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams. “You can’t look at a profession that does something like that as a positive.”
“It breaks my heart,” says Joseph Floyd, a former partner at Arthur Andersen’s defunct Boston office and now a managing director for Huron Consulting Group, when told of Barrett’s comment. “But pick up the paper and read the stories. A lot of students probably have that feeling right now.”
“Accounting has been tarnished, and it will take several years to regain the public’s trust,” says G. Peter Wilson, an accounting professor at Boston College and president of the American Accounting Association. “But at least people have now realized how valuable accounting is when it’s done right, and how much harm can be done when it’s done wrong.”