FURTHER TALES OF THE SCHISM: US ACCOUNTING FACULTY AND PRACTICE CREDENTIALS
William H. Black
and
Timothy J. Fogarty
both at
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, Ohio 44106
February 2012
email: [email protected]
FURTHER TALES OF THE SCHISM: US ACCOUNTING FACULTY AND PRACTICE CREDENTIALS
ABSTRACT
Several writers have asserted the existence of a “schism” between accounting
practitioners and accounting faculty. This paper attempts to document and chart the trajectory of
such a division by observing the extent to which academic accountants possess the essential
practice credentials. The absence of such credentials suggests a growing departure in the training
and values of the two groups. The results show a considerable decline in the tendency for
accounting faculty to hold practice credentials such as the CPA. This trend occurs in most
segments of the professoriate, but is more pronounced for the tenure track faculty or doctoral
institutions, for more junior faculty and for faculty employed by more prestigious academic
organizations. The paper shows this to be a problem experienced by individuals in the financial
accounting sub-field of the discipline.
FURTHER TALES OF THE SCHISM: US ACCOUNTING FACULTY AND PRACTICE CREDENTIALS
The study of accounting faculty has generated a considerable amount of information over
the years. We know much about their training (e.g., Schwartz et al. 2005) their ability to produce
publishable quality research (e.g., Hasselback et al. 2003) and their attitudes toward the issues of
the day (e.g., Magner et al. 1994). As a result of this work, we might feel that we have amassed
sufficient information to predict their performance in the critical areas of research, teaching, and
service.
This paper examines a surprisingly neglected attribute of consequential value. The extent
to which accounting faculty possess practice credentials, such as the CPA or the CMA, does not
seem to have been evaluated. As the professoriate of this discipline has moved toward more
academic credentials (e.g., Ph.D., DBA), the basic signifiers of professional competence have
receded into secondary and supplemental status. Nonetheless, one can argue that the latter
accomplishments retain importance for the individual and the community.
This research is organized into four subsequent sections. The first reviews the literature
that bears, albeit tangentially, on the issue. This effort allows specific research propositions to be
stated. The second section specifies the procedures and measurements that were used to develop
evidence on these relationships. In the usual manner, the third section summarizes the results.
This section includes the descriptive and statistical evidence that adds to our understanding of
what is true. The paper concludes with a discussion that argues that the journey constructed by
this paper has broader implications. Limitations are also acknowledged at this point.
2
LITERATURE REVIEW
A few attempts to quantify the extent to which accounting faculty possess practice
credentials have been made. Invariably such measurement was done as an incidental and small
part of general faculty surveys. This offers us limited snapshots of relatively small samples of
accounting faculty. From this work one would conclude that about two-thirds of faculty held
CPA designations (Gibson and Schroeder, 1995; 1998; Kamath et al. 2009). In the earlier two of
these studies that used data going back to the 1980s, the extent of certification was characterized
as growing. More specialized certificates (e.g., CMA, CIA) were also noted as areas of major
growth (Gibson and Schroeder, 1995) but were quite low in absolute terms at that time (Gibson
and Schroeder, 1998).
The largest part of the writing about professional certification pertains to the advance of
students toward these accomplishments. Young people that are in the process of achieving initial
credibility in the labor market would be the natural target audience for certification programs.
That such messages appear in publications such as New Accountant and in forums convened by
organizations like Beta Alpha Psi would therefore not be surprising. However, when such
communications appear in places more likely to be witnessed by accounting faculty, one has to
re-imagine what the faculty’s role might be in the transmission of the information.
The idea that faculty should be aware of the predispositions of their students could extend
to the latter’s intentions to become qualified professionals, as such would be indicated by the
pursuit of practice credentials (see Jackling and Calero, 2006). This line of thought perhaps
would suggest that faculty should be agents charged with drumming up more interest among
students. Consistently, the acquisition of certifications could be seen as a rite of passage for
3
students, adding a crescendo to accounting education in general (see Sathe, 2007). Faculty
members could conceive their proper role as the facilitators of such an educative transitional
process. However, the literature has not indicated that such vicarious participation might trigger
reflections upon the personal credentials held by faculty. In many sectors, the demand that
faculty have relevant work experiences seems louder than for certification, if the objective is to
enrich teaching (see Fierstein, 2008).
The extent that students successfully attain desired certifications could be interpreted as
an important feature of an education process. Schools with high pass rates ceteris paribus could
be thought of as superior to those with low pass rates. Such comparisons might be the basis for
suggestive reforms of the education process (e.g., Trujillo, 2007) or curricular design (Coe and
Delaney, 2008). Although changes of this nature would affect faculty, what bearing it might have
upon the personal credentials they held is speculative. On its face, a faculty that defines such
student achievement levels as the key success metric, but did not aspire to a faculty with the
same credentials, would be ironic.
Professional credentials also appear in the literature when admission requirements or
evaluative protocols change. Such events do not occur with high frequency, and might be taken
as opportunities to recount the history of the acquisition essentials (e.g., VanZante, 2010). These
pieces also tend to summarize historical pass rates and speculate on whether the changes at hand
will increase or decrease positive results (e.g., Davis, 1992). The main purpose of these pieces
seems to be to help faculty inform students of their contents, as students strategize to acquire
these distinctions. The information theoretically is just as valuable for faculty intent on a later
career upgrade of their professional credentials. If the general nature of recent
examinationchanges can be said to be toward greater access and to lower degrees of content
4
aggregation, the experience of acquisition for such non-traditional takers as extant faculty should
be more viable. Nonetheless, the literature most often assumes that only students should care
about administrative updates on professional credentials.
A brief consideration of the trajectory of the accounting professoriate argues against the
relevance of professional accounting certifications. Whereas these ranks were filled by
individuals with masters level academic degrees combined with the practice license (CPA) not
too long ago, the transition to doctoral degree supremacy was swift and thorough (Anderson and
Previts, 1984). The latter credential, designating research competence, became that which
signified superiority and came to nearly define who qualified for tenure track status. Gradually
accreditation standards focused on Ph.D. coverage, a position that was softened when it morphed
into academic qualification. The dominance of one way to signify differential competence over
others cannot be resolved on technical grounds, but instead represents a particularized
confluence of social arrangements (Dingwall, 1987). Thus, the diminishment of those that sport
only practitioner credentials was an outcome that required the cooperation of academic
organizations, the accounting profession and others in society. Grasping for the value
configurations that resided in academic traditions required the sacrifice of those markings that
signaled close affiliations with theprofessionals that practiced in the “real world.”
Accounting academics, now in possession of their own credentials, set about to make
more meaningful their distinctiveness. Publication became an end in itself rather than a means to
one. Earning a Ph.D. was not the icing on a cake formed by practice, but instead was the first bite
of a completely different cake. As time progressed, it became increasingly rare to find an
academic who did actual accounting work on the side. The major reason that work for clients
was eschewed was the demands of research, an activity that became all-consuming for some.
5
Rather than strive to do the minimum to get tenure, academics in the business fields are
persisting with research much later into their careers, often leveraging the talents of others to stay
in that game (Walsh, 2011). Practice credentials do not make material contributions to such a
plan for a life. At best the crystallized remnants of a discarded “Plan A,” practice credentials
would rarely be sought after the Plan B of an academic life was in process.
As academic traditions in accounting matured, recruits increasingly did not even pass
through a phase wherein their career intentions were to practice accounting. Accounting
education gradually became less dependent upon those that were dissatisfied with their practice
careers. Like many non-applied fields, the advantages of going into doctoral programs as a direct
continuity of lesser degrees became better recognized. The most visible indication of such is the
highly successful academic tracks offered by larger Masters of Accountancy programs.1 Students
using this approach have neither the time nor the inclination to obtain practice credentials. The
time-honored belief that the best new faculty would be those that had “carried the bag” (had
accounting experience) has not been abandoned. However, the value-added nature of such “real
world” exposure has been downgraded from a necessity to a secondary attribute.
The transition to a full-time, research-enabled, first-career faculty might be considered a
logical necessity in the effort to increase the value of that which academic accounting creates.
However, this conclusion is not the axiomatic product of higher focus and purposeful planning.
The results are inconclusive on the question of whether academically-credentialed faculty
members are better than practice-qualified accounting faculty members. Whether the conduct of
academic research has contributed to the instruction of accounting remains an open question.
Strong doubts about such reside in dimensions such as attention to detail, curricular distinction
and teaching commitment (Miller, 1988). The fact that the accounting academy finds it necessary
6
after several decades of effort, to defend the pragmatic contributions of its research (e.g.,
Moehrle et al. 2009) suggests that its value is routinely disputed in practice circles. Thus,
academic credentials might be better understood as an alternative to practice credentials, rather
than the inherent superior of the latter.
One should be more concerned about the silence that has come to surround the issue of
the possession of practice credentials by accounting faculty. Where the issue should arise, it does
not. For example, possession of credentials does not make the list of twelve qualities sought by
doctoral programs in potential admittees (Behn et al. 2008). The certification of faculty also fails
to enter into the debate over the relationship among accounting education, accounting research
and accounting practice (Sprouse, 1989; Kinney, 1989; Dyckman, 1989).
The distancing of academic accounting from the certification process is also evident from
the diminished frequency with which academics write on that subject. Academics provided
studies of, and commentary upon the process whereby accounting students achieved certification
with considerable regularity until the mid-1990s (see Fogarty, 1996). Although the sudden
disinterest of accounting academics in the CPA examination may be due to its reduced
visibility,2 a professoriate that has never had this experience personally is unlikely to believe it to
be important to others.
The dearth of literature that squarely frames the change in accounting faculty credentials
creates considerable freedom for the empirical questions that might be posed. This paper
exercises this liberty to ask foundational questions about this suspected phenomenon.
The first issue that has to be raised is the extent to which accounting faculty have moved
to alternative credentialing. Although we suspect that fewer accounting faculty have the
7
credentials of practicing accountants, this has not been documented. A mostly descriptive
proposition of change over time also has value as a threshold for subsequent ideas that attempt to
establish external associations. Furthermore, we should aim to better appreciate the timing of any
change in collective credentials. Whereas the literature suggests the likelihood of change over the
long run, it fails to more precisely pinpoint periods of acceleration and plateauing.
H₁: The proportion of accounting faculty with practice certification has decreased
over time.
Care should be exerted when painting academic accounting with broad brush strokes.
Like any discipline, academic accounting comprises many sectors that have varying priorities
and tendencies (see Ruscio, 1987). As previously observed, some schools have prioritized, and to
some extent built their disciplinary brands around, CPA exam pass rates. These schools might
favor faculty that possess traditional practitioner credentials. Although research has shown that
school differences matter to CPA exam pass rates (Marts et al. 1988), how much of this
difference relates to a faculty that exhibits similar affinities is unclear. That schools that are
exceptional in this regard tend not to be the same schools that have highly ranked MBA
programs or are well-known for their accounting research should be noted (see also Accounting
Web, 2008). At the other extreme, schools dedicated to producing academic research may prefer
faculty with different abilities than would be signaled with practice credentials. Competing for
the journal space of publications at the highest end of the academic accounting discipline puts a
premium on mathematical and statistical abilities not generally found among practitioners. While
practice credentials would not necessarily be viewed as a negative, they would not be as
positively received as they might be in other sectors of the academy. Generally speaking,
research schools have captured the high end of the prestige hierarchy and thus become a
8
convenient differentiating metric for present purposes. This institutional separation can be
captured with two related hypotheses:
H2a: The proportion of accounting faculty with practice credentials is lower at prestigious universities than at other institutions.
H₂b: The proportion of accounting faculty with practice certification declined earlier
at prestigious universities than at other institutions.
The development of the accounting curriculum has contributed to the elaboration of
several sub-disciplines that have become meaningful partitions for accounting academics. These
include areas that relate to the use of accounting information (financial, managerial) as well as
lines of business for public accounting firms (auditing, taxation). Accounting faculty members
develop and maintain personal identities within these areas as a result of habitual teaching
responsibilities and constant research activities. Simultaneously, practice credentials vary in their
domains. While the CPA tends to cover the waterfront of these sub-areas, the CMA and the CIA
tend to be co-extensive with only one. This overlay is also complicated by the unequal
development of the academic research in the sub-areas. Financial accounting has captured the
mainstream of the discipline and therefore is likely to have the most disproportionate number of
non-practice credentialed academics, if such has occurred as the result of the pursuit of research.
This issue must also include consideration of the rate at which full time faculty have been
displaced by part-time adjuncts (Leslie, 2007). If this transition has occurred with greater
frequency in areas where a larger number of full-time faculty possess practice credentials, the
impact on the total rates of credential possession will have been disproportionately large.
Accordingly, sufficient reasons exist to suspect that the trajectory of academics with practice
credentials will be patterned by sub-disciplinary interest area. This line of thinking can be
captured by the following:
9
H₃: The proportion of accounting faculty with practice credentials is related to the
primary academic interest area of the faculty member.
The accounting discipline has only recently been considered a full-fledged part of higher
education. This status is demonstrated by the continuation of the debate about its identity and the
proper degree of separation it should have from professional practice (Fellingham, 2007; Zeff,
1987). Although the field is still in its infancy, its evolution may be apparent within the ranks of
its membership. There may be evidence of generational divide pertaining to its values and norms
(see Schmidt, 2009). More senior faculty members may have been socialized as accountants,
even though they find themselves currently employed by an institution of higher learning. Even
if they do not currently practice, or even have any present intention of doing so, they retain
practice credentials. For them, those designations are an important part of their credibility to
students and to external constituents. On the other hand, junior faculty members are less likely to
have been baptized in this manner. They might more strongly believe in standing apart from
practitioners, and are convinced that a doctoral degree in accounting provides credibility not
dependent upon the profession.This tension can be reduced to the following, which uses the
organizational rank of the individual to define the two groups under consideration:
H₄: The proportion of accounting faculty with practice credentials is larger for
those with higher academic rank.
In sum, the four research propositions promise to materially increase that which is known
about faculty practice credentials. While many would be content to know the general presence of
such attributes among the faculty now compared with the past (H1), this research goes further.
The consideration of when accountants who happen to teach became faculty is most directly
tested by H4 wherein rank is used to divide faculty on a temporal basis. Two different attempts
were made to partition the phenomenon. H2 suggests that the movement away from practitioner
10
certification has been led by high prestige schools that have advanced an alternative status
hierarchy. H3 suggest that the movement has progressed at different degrees and rates in some
sub-fields of the discipline. Together the research propositions aim to create valid and nuanced
descriptive information, and to begin the process of identifying antecedents.
METHODOLOGY
The annual editions of the Accounting Faculty Directory (Hasselback) were used as the
source of information about whether an accounting faculty person was certified. For these
purposes, most of the entire range of data was considered after the point at which Hasselback
began reporting certification status. This ran from 1980 to 2011.3 Several minor corrections to
this data were necessary. For example, if a person’s certification was noted for several years with
the exception of one year in mid-course, it was assumed to exist also in the missing year. Such
instances were very rare, and for the most part the data is internally consistent.
Although the CPA certificate is arguably the singularly most important one in the
accounting field, several others also exist. Those that work or concentrate their academic efforts
in a non-financial accounting subfield might argue that other certifications are more indicative of
their particular expertise. For example, the CMA alternative for those in corporate practice was
developed in the 1970s. This interest group’s successful stepping out from the CPA umbrella
encouraged other specialty certification such as the CIA and the CFP for internal auditors and
financial planners. The Hasselback directory presents information on holders of CPA, CMA, and
CIA credentials. This proliferation allowed the holding of certification to be considered in two
alternative ways. The first considered all certifications to be equal. In such a view, no difference
was made between those that possess just the CPA, just a CMA, just a CIA and those that
11
possess two or all three credentials. The alternative approach was to segregate the CPA for
individual consideration.
Combining all the years produced 27,995 instances of a certification holding faculty
person were observed. Of these, 26,830 involved the CPA. Other credentials tended to be
additional to the CPA rather than “in lieu of” that credential. This data suggests that not much
difference should exist whether credentials are defined narrowly (CPA only) or more
expansively. All certifications were considered in the analysis in this paper.
The second Hypothesis requires that the institutional prestige of schools be measured.
Although such an ambitious undertaking necessitates imperfection, two foundational ideas
underlie the approach that was taken. First, we presume that doctoral programs have higher
prestige than non-doctoral program as groups. This allows an initial comparison of these two
general types of schools. Which schools belonged to which group was determined by reference
to the Hasselback (2011) tabulation of doctoral-granting schools in Accounting. Secondly,
prestige within the doctoral programs is assumed to be multi-dimensional. However, the clearest
opportunity to observe discrepancies can be based on personal transfers within these schools.
Following logic developed by Fogarty and Saftner (1992) and extended in Fogarty et al. (2012),
recruiting doctoral students for faculty positions is an acknowledgment of the superior status of
the producing school. This condition allows a hierarchy to be produced (see Fogarty et al. 2012)
wherein higher ranked schools place their students at lower ranked ones, but the reverse is quite
rare. Prestige also must include other elements including contributions to the knowledge of the
field, honors bestowed and general reputation. For these purposes, the Fogarty and Markarian
(2007) meta-analytic measure was used. Although both of these measures are available as a
12
continuous measure of 86 schools, they will be grouped into tranches of schools for the limited
purposes of this research.
Faculty interest areas are contained within the annual Hasselback directory. For these
purposes, the first interest code was accepted as the main sub-disciplinary area, as needed by H3
to subdivide the faculty population. Although this is another imperfect measure, an increasing
number of faculty simplify matters by having only one such designation.
Faculty rank data was also taken from the Hasselback directories. This information was
made necessary by the final hypothesis. For these purposes multiple “snapshots” were taken.
Rank was evaluated with the earliest data (1980), and every five years thereafter to the end of the
range of data (2011). This allowed multiple comparisons of the more experienced and less
experienced, among the accounting academic communities that existed in those years.
RESULTS
Table 1 provides descriptive information on the variables involved in this research. Most
prominently, the percent of accounting faculty who hold a practice certification varies from a
high of 72.0% in 1995 to a low of 60.5% in 2011. When considering only the CPA designation,
the range runs from 67.5% to 58.0% in the same years.4 The decline in credential holding can
also be measured in terms of total credentials held. These go from a high of 0.82 per faculty
member in 1995 and 2001 to a low of 0.69 per faculty member in 2011. Not only has the decline
been fairly steep in magnitude, but it has been consistent in direction over the past 15 years.
After peaking in 1995, the percentage of accounting faculty members with a credential has fallen
in every year sampled, with the largest decline from 2005 to 2011. This evidence is consistent
13
with the H1 expectation of declining certification. Accounting faculty members no longer possess
practice credentials at the magnitude that they did in the past.
[Table 1 here]
The data on total faculty certification shows a considerable increase in the extent of
faculty certification until near the middle of the period. This is followed by a steep decline,
especially in the last few years. As a result, the extent of faculty certification has nearly returned
to its levels as of the earliest year 1980-1981.
The second hypothesis pertained to the prospect that some schools have experienced the
decline of faculty practice credentials more rapidly than others. More specifically, H2 anticipates
in its two parts that higher prestige schools will show a larger and steeper decline in this regard.
Table 1 provided some descriptive evidence on the most general status divide in the academy.
For each of the selected years that are five years apart, the percent of doctoral-program faculty
with certification is lower than that of the non-doctoral faculty, and this observation holds true
for all ranks. This difference reaches its first extreme in 1990-1991 but this has been surpassed in
the current year 2011-2012 where the discrepancy approaches a 20% difference. The differences
at each rank between doctoral programs and non-doctoral programs were subjected to t-tests for
the years presented. Those tests showed significant differences (α=.001) for assistant professors
in all years, and for associate professors in all years but 1980-1981 (α=.01). Professors at
doctoral programs had significantly lower certifications in 1990-1991 (α=.05) and for all
subsequent years (α=.01).
14
A more challenging test of the second hypothesis works within the doctoral programs to
discover leadership of the Table 1 trend. Table 2 provides two different approaches to this issue,
varying the operationalization and measurement of the prestige variable in use.
[Table 2 here]
Panel A of Table 2 is grouped into quartiles of descending institutional prestige based on
an analysis of placement of doctoral graduates at other institutions. The grouping into quartiles
was done as a way to suppress the excessive variability in continuous measures that may put too
much emphasis on small differences. Panel B of Table 2 performs the same general analysis with
an alternative way of approaching prestige. This array is grouped into quartiles of descending
institutional prestige based on a meta-analysis of institutional prestige.In general, the results
show that the higher prestige groups tend to have lower levels of faculty with practice
credentials. The variation in these levels is quite large. Although all quadrants exhibit the up and
down pattern of the overall classification (see Table 1), the high prestige schools seem to have
departed certifications earlier. The table 2 data was subjected to a t-test to determine if the noted
differences were statistically significant. The Panel B results show that higher declines in
certification among faculty occur at the more prestigious sectors (p<.05 in both instances).
Examination of Panel A data over time again indicates that faculty certification fell sooner
among higher prestige doctoral schools. Whether prestige is measured from the perspective of
the job market hierarchy or from that of the meta-analysis of publication, change in certification
is positively related to rank. That is, schools that declined the most in faculty certification had the
lower ranks (the most prestigious schools). These relationships are both significant at the p<.05
level.
15
Faculty certification also fell earlier in the doctoral school environment. Maximum
certification proportions among doctoral program faculty were reached in 1980-1981 for
Professors, and in 1995-1996 for Associates and Assistants. By comparison, the proportion of
certified Professors and Associates at non-doctoral programs reached their zenith in 2000-2001.
Certified Assistants at non-doctoral programs only declined .01 between the maximum in 1990-
1991 and the level reported in 2000-2001, while doctoral program Assistants with certifications
dropped .10 over the same period.
Whereas Table 2 restricted attention to the doctoral schools, the information in Table 1
can support consideration of a broader tableau by comparing the doctoral schools as a whole to
all other schools as a group. The result suggest an even stronger relationship (p<.01) in the same
direction. Doctoral program faculty moved toward the lack of practice credential with more vigor
over the period studied. In convincing degree, H2 is supported.
The third hypothesis links faculty interest area with change in the rate of faculty
certification. Here expectations roughly paralleled the extent to which faculty interest areas could
be mapped into specific lines of business operated by the public accounting firms. Table 3
summarizes the results of this analysis. As expected, certifications varied considerably by
interest area. In 1995-1996 for example, the proportion of faculty members with certifications
reached absolute highs in taxation and auditing (nearing 80 to 90% of all faculty). However, in
interest areas such as information systems and managerial accounting, certification barely
approaches three-fifths to two-thirds of the faculty members declaring interest in those areas.
All interest areas exhibit a pattern of increase and then decline over the range of years.
Most interest areas are in the same position in 2011-2012 that they were in 1980-1981 as a net
16
result of these opposite trajectories. Exceptions include the 5% decline for certified auditing
faculty and the nearly 9% increase in certified information systems faculty over the period.
The steepness of the mid-period decline presents a variable of interest. Some areas, like
managerial accounting and information systems, post declines of less than 10% from their peaks
to the current year. The losses elsewhere are more severe.The largest rate of decline is seen by
faculty members that list the financial accounting areas as their major interest. This area declined
19.6% from 74.1% of faculty members with certifications to 59.6% with certifications. The
highly-certified audit area is also down 15.6% from its 1995-1996 peak of 89.8% of faculty
members with certifications. The net result of all changes is to diminish the importance of
interest area as a varying factor, as formerly strong areas declined and weak areas improved over
the 30 year period. Nonetheless, interest area still matters. The ANOVA that uses these sub-areas
as factors shows significance at the p<.05 level. A good deal of this difference is due to the
contrast between financial accounting and all the other interest areas. These results support H3.
[Table 3 here]
The final hypothesis explores faculty career position, as such is captured in academic
rank, as a correlate of certificate trajectory. For these purposes, the tenure track ranks of
assistant, associate and full professor were considered. Table 4 summarizes the statistical results
and provides some descriptive detail. The proportion of certified faculty decreases at all ranks
after 2000-2001, although the decline in the Assistant ranks began somewhat sooner.
Interestingly the decline in the percentage of certified full professors does not exhibit the early
period increase of the other ranks. The other ranks experience the now familiar mid-course
correction that began in the mid-1990s.
17
[Table 4 here]
Figure 1 provides a visual summary of the data in Table 4.This depiction makes it clear that only
one rank changed with drama. Whereas full professors and associate professors vary they track
within the 65-75% range over the entire 30 years. Assistant professors start very low, rise but
never reach the heights of the other ranks, and then drop to unprecedented lows by the current
year. Thus it is clear that the least experienced professors that are the vanguard of the change in
credentialing. As suggested by an ANOVA using these ranks, the differences are significant
(p<.05). The results support Hypothesis 4, indicating it is the least experienced professors that
are the vanguard of the change in credentialing.
Summary
The results provide many lines of reasoning that build our understanding of accounting
faculty with or without practice credentials. Evidence in support of all four research propositions
was produced. The only major deviation from expectations that was discovered in the process
was that the decline in faculty certification is a more recent phenomenon than expected.
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DISCUSSION
The schism between accounting academics and accounting practitioners has many faces
and therefore manifests itself in many ways. This paper illustrates that it pertains to the most
basic ways in which individuals signify their competence. The letters that people put after their
names, and carry upon their business cards, tell the world in a very efficient way who they are
and what they are likely to know.
The most basic finding of the paper is the diminution of accounting faculty practice
credentials over time. This trend has occurred during a period when more credentials were
available than ever before, and the signaling potential of such designations was more precise.The
decline does not go back very long, certainly not back to the point where academic accounting
separated from accounting practice. The decline of practice credentials began in the mid-1990s.
Thus, when looking for explanations, the events of this time are where we would begin a search.
The decline of practice credentials among accounting academics is more extreme among
doctoral program schools than non-doctoral program schools, and then more extreme for higher
prestige doctoral program schools than lower prestige ones. These differences offer insight into
possible rationales for the change in credential possession. To the extent that the components
with larger declines in practice credentials place more emphasis on research, a differential is
noted. This choice creates more urgency for a faculty that displays superior capabilities in
directions other than leaning toward accounting professionalism. This preference can be
expected to permeate all personnel decisions including who is recruited ab initio and who is
retained past the pre-tenure probationary period. The acquisition and maintenance of practice
19
credentials create no advantage in a game of this sort. In some instances, such credentials may
send the wrong signal to the gatekeepers of these processes.
To recognize that devotion to research is the alternative god that must be worshiped does
not necessarily diminish the relevance of practice credentials. The insights that only those that
are steeped in the community of practice possess might motivate valuable and innovative
research. Why the extent of research involvement and practice engagement seem to be
antagonistic might have to do with the particular values that are embedded in accounting
research. A full exploration of this question is beyond the scope of this paper.
The fact that practice credentials have declined more for the financial accounting interest
area faculty seems to be a reflection of the demanding research that is expected of faculty in that
area. A strong preponderance of foreign-born accounting faculty appears to be located in that
sub-area. Both of these tendencies make financial a distinctive area that is less dependent upon
practice credentials. On the other hand, taxation is less overcrowded, and has a more modest
research profile. Areas like tax are also less attractive to foreign-born academics since those
areas are formally or informally steeped in US law or standards. Unfortunately, the financial area
is the largest area and the one at the heart of the discipline.
That the disproportionate share of the diminished representation of accounting faculty
with practice credentials is assistant professors suggests a generational shift. As older faculty
members retire and are replaced with younger ones, a different breed of academic is gaining. In
addition to other attributes such as greater research ability, the new cohort does not seem as
likely to have come from practice to education. The possibility that retirees might not have been
replaced by anyone on the tenure track presents other issues. They may have been replaced by
20
temporary or part-time instructors without even academic credentials. Alternatively, bringing
practitioners back into the classroom might have the impact of enhancing the practice credibility
of the teaching group.
The change in the accounting academy that this paper has documented may not be as
regrettable as it may seem. Perhaps there is value in having greater degrees of independence
between the town and gown when it comes to areas of social behavior that touch upon
accountability and stewardship. Perhaps a common socialization of teachers and professionals is
excessively monolithic such that a spirited debate over what is good accounting would not occur
when all have been cut from the same cloth. These are normative questions of public policy that
should be discussed and resolved.
The paper documents a change in the qualification of accounting faculty that has both
practical and symbolic importance. As a declining number of accounting faculty possesses the
certification that attests to their technical competence, their ability to push students to the highest
level of procedure proficiency becomes debatable. Without serious accounting content in
doctoral programs, the depth of the faculty’s knowledge of the core can be questioned. While
practice credentials do not guarantee continuing currency, they do form an investment in that
direction.
Symbolically, the growing absence of credentials makes it just a little more difficult for
faculty to act as role models for students. Faculty without credentials set themselves more apart
from practitioners in the eyes of students. Time spent with faculty therefore might not be the
entre to professional life we have imagined it to be. It might instead be a curious prelude to it that
functions as a slightly off-target invitation to the profession.
21
The true extent of the consequences caused by the increased tendency of the accounting
academy to not be certified as accounting practitioners might never be known. As a practical
matter, the small amount of time that students are in their formal accounting coursework
minimizes the influence that accounting faculty can have. This experience was never
contemplated as the sum total of a person’s professional education, but rather as its
commencement. A student going into public accounting would probably, following graduation,
be subject to intensive in-firm training conducted by firm employees that were fully certified.
The results that showed that certification is becoming less prominent among US
accounting academics indicate that a third moment in the history of this occupation been
reached. The first era was exemplified by the MBA/CPA credentialed faculty persons who
continued an accounting practice while not teaching. The second moment was the advent of
practitioners who came to the academy on a full time basis relatively early in their career. These
people added a doctoral degree to their practice certification, essentially launching their research
and teaching careers informed by the problems of practice. The modern era has been increasingly
marked by the first group of academics who are independent from practice. Their careers prior to
joining the academy do not include professional practice, and therefore certification does not
enter into their backgrounds. This group has been bred to be researchers for whom the problems
of practice are a rhetoric that is mostly to be used to justify their work.
Even in the absence of actual teaching differences that exist between those faculty
members that are certified and those are not, important issues are presented. If certification is
important, its consequence exists in the potential to contribute to the concerns of the profession,
even if that possibility lies dormant. To not be certified is essentially a statement that devalues
this possibility. Faculty members that are not certified may be fully vested academics but they
22
have distanced themselves from the community much more than an individual that used to
practice.
The absence of certification as the norm of the accounting academy has other collateral
consequences. Ceteris paribus, accounting faculty members without certifications are less likely
to be active participants in state societies of accountants, as well as within the AICPA. The work
of these organizations will be less informed by the keen analytic minds of those that teach. Most
notably, academics are also likely to absent themselves from the standard setting process if they
do not feel as if they are not part of the community of practice. This also means that research is
less likely to be embraced by those who set accounting rules.
Some of the limitations of this paper stem from its heavy reliance upon the Accounting
Faculty Directory (Hasselback). Taking the identity of faculty that are and are not certified
exclusively from that source could be problematic if the information contained therein is not
correct. The Hasselback directory has been published for more than 35 years, and has had ample
opportunity to be updated and corrected as needed. The magnitude of the changes that this paper
has documented would also be resistant to a considerable degree of error, even if it were to exist.
Similar conditions of data dependency exist for the other variables used in the research such as
faculty rank, and faculty area of interest.
The effort to classify faculty into the major sub-areas of the academic accounting world
was imperfect. The codes contained in the Accounting Faculty Directory were initially chosen by
either the faculty person or their supervisor. The Directory’s assembler provides academic
accounting units a yearly chance to revise their listings; an opportunity that is often devolved to
the listed people. However, one cannot be assured that the codes capture the true interest of the
23
faculty members for those that teach and research in different areas, or who have more than one
equally strong allegiance.
This research used multiple measures of institutional prestige, reducing dependence on
any particular measure. Nonetheless, one can never rest comfortably with such an elusive
construct. To the extent that the prestige of accounting programs is neither captured in the
placement of doctoral students or the meta-rank of many previous ranking studies, it may have
been misspecified here. We take some solace in the robustness of the conclusion vis-a-vis the
measures that were used, and therefore believe that other specifications would also align.
24
ENDNOTES
1 Brigham Young University pioneered this program. That school places students directly into some of the best accounting doctoral schools such as Indiana University and the University of Texas. 2 Many changes were made to the administration of the CPA examination in the late 1990s. These included its transition to a non-disclosed status, its becoming available “upon appointment” with a testing center, and its becoming computer delivered. All of these changes contribute to a lowered visibility to those that are not directly involved with it. 3 James Hasselback first compiled the Accounting Faculty Directory for the 1974-1975 academic year. The early editions were essentially mimeographs in very limited distribution. As the years proceeded, coverage of schools expanded. The first year used by this research was one of the first reasonably complete editions. 4 The years covered by this research have witnessed the emergence of many relatively new specialty practice credentials. These include the Certificate in Management Accounting (CMA), the Certificate in Internal Auditing (CIA) and many others. The extent to which faculty members in accounting have sought these designations has not been high. Therefore, the descriptive results presented did not detail these frequencies separately from CPA certifications.
25
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28
Table 1
Extent of Practitioner Credentials Held by Accounting Faculty for Selected Years and
Types of School
Year DoctoralOther
Colleges Total DoctoralOther
Colleges Total DoctoralOther
Colleges Total
1980-1981 1,663 3,097 4,760 54.8% 58.8% 57.4% 53.6% 57.0% 55.8%
1985-1986 1,724 3,914 5,638 61.9% 67.3% 65.7% 60.2% 64.9% 63.4%
1990-1991 1,778 4,664 6,442 62.1% 73.7% 70.5% 59.8% 70.4% 67.5%
1995-1996 1,648 4,923 6,571 65.2% 74.4% 72.1% 62.7% 71.1% 69.0%
2000-2001 1,654 4,764 6,418 60.3% 75.4% 71.5% 58.1% 71.9% 68.3%
2005-2006 1,638 4,683 6,321 56.2% 72.1% 68.0% 54.0% 68.7% 64.9%
2011-2012 1,761 4,964 6,725 46.5% 65.5% 60.5% 44.6% 62.8% 58.0%
Faculty with any Certification
Total Number of Faculty Certified Faculty - CPA, CMA, CIA Faculty with CPA only
29
Table 2
Extent of Practitioner Credentials held by Doctoral School Accounting Faculty for Select
Years by Prestige Quadrant
Panel A
Prestige Ranking 1980-1981 1985-1986 1990-1991 1995-1996 2000-2001 2005-2006 2011-2012
Quartile 1 368 378 405 367 376 358 381 Quartile 2 339 347 348 322 349 350 383 Quartile 3 394 388 402 372 374 379 395 Quartile 4 341 351 344 317 286 272 296
Quartile 1 41.3% 47.6% 44.4% 51.2% 44.7% 39.1% 33.6%Quartile 2 55.8% 56.5% 56.9% 59.0% 59.3% 53.1% 44.6%Quartile 3 55.3% 65.7% 64.7% 64.2% 57.2% 55.4% 41.8%Quartile 4 61.6% 70.1% 73.8% 75.7% 72.7% 71.0% 55.1%Panel B
Prestige Ranking 1980-1981 1985-1986 1990-1991 1995-1996 2000-2001 2005-2006 2011-2012
Quartile 1 342 365 364 330 358 346 374 Quartile 2 419 417 451 423 433 430 453 Quartile 3 384 380 397 370 373 376 407 Quartile 4 334 357 356 316 300 293 311
Quartile 1 41.8% 44.1% 39.8% 46.7% 40.8% 37.9% 31.8%Quartile 2 53.2% 60.4% 60.1% 61.0% 59.6% 53.0% 43.9%Quartile 3 59.9% 69.7% 70.5% 70.3% 61.9% 60.4% 46.2%Quartile 4 60.8% 65.3% 66.6% 70.9% 69.3% 62.8% 53.1%
Doctoral-granting Institutions (Prestige from Placements)
Doctoral-granting Institutions (Prestige from Meta-Analysis)
Number of Faculty
Number of Faculty
Proportion with CPA
Proportion with CPA
30
Table 3
Area of Specialization 1980-1981 1985-1986 1990-1991 1995-1996 2000-2001 2005-2006 2011-2012
Financial 2,144 2,862 3,100 2,954 2,920 2,923 3,046
Cost/Mgr 821 969 1,067 1,114 1,073 1,010 934
Tax 533 726 760 757 696 639 655
Audit 324 434 621 737 746 739 819
DP/Sys 173 267 363 332 359 388 361
Overall 3,995 5,258 5,911 5,894 5,794 5,699 5,815
Financial 60.6% 67.8% 72.1% 74.1% 72.1% 67.4% 59.6%
Cost/Mgr 56.9% 59.1% 64.6% 65.5% 65.6% 64.9% 59.9%
Tax 72.8% 73.6% 79.7% 79.9% 80.9% 78.9% 71.6%
Audit 80.2% 86.4% 88.9% 89.8% 88.3% 83.9% 75.8%
DP/Sys 41.6% 48.7% 50.7% 56.3% 59.1% 55.9% 50.4%
Overall 62.3% 67.6% 72.2% 74.2% 73.2% 69.6% 62.7%
Faculty in Specialization Area
Proportion with CPA, CMA, or CIA
Professional Certification - By Area of Specialization
31
Table 4
1980-1981 1985-1986 1990-1991 1995-1996 2000-2001 2005-2006 2011-2012
Assistant 1,399 1,740 2,029 1,911 1,638 1,517 1,706
Associate 1,150 1,402 1,692 2,023 2,066 1,944 1,852
Professor 1,106 1,451 1,655 1,752 1,832 1,894 1,885
Overall 3,655 4,593 5,376 5,686 5,536 5,355 5,443
Assistant 48.0% 56.6% 63.6% 64.8% 62.0% 54.3% 38.7%
Associate 66.3% 67.0% 69.9% 73.2% 72.3% 69.1% 65.6%
Professor 74.0% 72.4% 71.9% 70.5% 70.9% 69.6% 68.2%
Overall 61.6% 64.8% 68.1% 69.5% 68.8% 65.1% 58.1%
Tenure-track Faculty with CPA
Number of Faculty
Proportion with CPA
32
Figure 1
35.0%
40.0%
45.0%
50.0%
55.0%
60.0%
65.0%
70.0%
75.0%
1980‐1981 1985‐1986 1990‐1991 1995‐1996 2000‐2001 2005‐2006 2011‐2012
Proportion of Faculty with CPA
Assistant Associate Professor Overall
