Today’s undergraduate students face a volatile employment landscape after they graduate. According to the World Economic Forum, AI will replace 92 million jobs in the next five years. It is not surprising that Best Colleges’ recent survey of undergraduates found 1 in 4 (27%) citing AI as making them doubt or reconsider their major. These students are worried about their salary after graduation (53%) and job prospects (48%) as they compete with AI’s capabilities. While AI has never directly been linked to the decline in undergraduate interest in accounting, it seems like this trend deserves some scrutiny.
College students already use AI at extremely high rates. According to a recent survey by the Digital Education Council, 86% of students say they use AI in their studies. ChatGPT is the most common program used, followed by Grammarly and Copilot. But the interesting thing this survey found is that 58% of students who regularly use AI say “they do not have sufficient AI knowledge or skills.” More troubling, 80% say their university is not embedding AI into programs or courses in a way that meets their expectations.
Clearly students are hungry for AI training. While accounting does not come immediately to mind when it comes to AI, some colleges have altered their accounting curriculums to include analytics and AI to attract more students and to show them how truly integrated AI can be in accounting work. For example, the University of South Florida (USF) experienced a 30% enrollment drop in accounting between 2017 and 2022. USF’s accounting program director decided to teach analytics and AI as well as rebrand classes to highlight technologies used in the discipline. For example, Auditing II, was rebranded, “Advanced Auditing: Regulation, Technology and Analytics.”
Strategies like the kind USF is using, combining accounting fundamental programs with advanced technology, are well-received by students. For example, USF’s year-over-year fall 2023 accounting enrollments grew by more than 11%. USF’s year-over-year spring 2024 accounting enrollments grew by more than 18%. As colleges work to attract more students to accounting, this year, U.S. undergraduate accounting major enrollment increased by 12% in fall 2024, compared to fall 2023 according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
More strategies the accounting and finance community can employ to continue to grow the student pipeline include:
- Promoting accounting’s stability and universal demand
- Highlighting the diverse array of industries where accountants can work
- Demonstrating the integration of technology, like AI, with accounting work
When accounting programs show how today’s professionals work hand-in-hand with AI, the accounting profession can grow more, and not less, attractive to undergraduate students.