KPMG’s US chief is urging the industry to make it easier to become an accountant in order to halt the “brewing crisis” in the profession. Paul Knopp has suggested that students should only be required to have four years of education, rather than five, to qualify as an accountant. He did not propose dropping the required one year of work experience or the passing of the CPA exam. “We have a ‘brewing crisis’ right now, with the number of students going to college and the number going into accounting, and we need to absolutely address it in the very near term,” he told the FT. “I can’t over-emphasize, it’s not just the Big Four. We need more accountants in corporations and outside of the Big Four. The industry that we are in is systemically important to the functioning of the capital markets.” Government data showed that the number of US accounting undergraduates has fallen to the lowest level in 15 years. The number of people taking the required CPA exam fell from 100,000 in 2016 to just above 67,000 in 2022, a 17-year low.
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