Why Accounting? Perceptions of the Accounting Industry and Factors That Affect Choosing a Major

Abstract

This research study explores decision-making factors that affect students’ college major choice along with their perceptions of accounting as a major and professional career. It discovers what factors affect one’s college major choice and what is considered when choosing a future career field. Furthermore, this study compares job characteristic perceptions between accounting and non-accounting majors while discovering reasons that accounting was or was not considered as a major. The results indicate that students perceive that math is closely related to accounting, although accounting as a major is not necessarily math intensive. Although the number of accounting majors within the surveyed group was low, the findings also indicate that accounting majors are significantly more likely to rank certain positive job characteristics to be present in the accounting industry than non-accounting majors. However, 86% of our participants noted that they did not consider accounting as a possible major for a variety of reasons. The most common reasons included that they were not interested in the subject matter, or it was unappealing and required too much math. College admissions staff and accounting industry professionals should utilize this information to further recruit students to the major. This can also be used to better educate the public on what the accounting industry consists of and what qualities are useful in the accounting industry since the majority of participants assume that accountants are math experts.