Undergraduate accounting enrollment climbs to its highest level since 2020

Can we get an amen?

Enrollment in undergraduate accounting programs grew in the fall 2024 semester, climbing to a four year high, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Undergraduate accounting enrollment totaled 267,278 students, a 12% increase from fall 2023.

Graduate accounting enrollment painted a slightly less rosy picture, decreasing 2.8% from the prior fall. But overall accounting enrollment, even with the dip in graduate students, still jumped 10.5% year over year. The good news is that’s a higher percentage jump than the 4.5% enrollment increase all other majors saw.

We needed this, to put it mildly. Between the 2012–2013 and 2021–2022 school years, accounting enrollment dropped 16.9%, per the Journal of Accountancy.

“The pipeline is broken,” Kimberly Reeve, dean of the Guarini School of Business at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, New Jersey, told CFO Brew back in 2023. “There is a crisis in the accounting industry where there are not enough accountants coming up through the ranks to take over for all the accounting practices that exist.”

Like we said: We needed this.

“Strong accounting enrollment is heartening,” Sue Coffey, CPA, CGMA, and AICPA’s CEO of public accounting, said in a statement. “The larger undergraduate student body presents a bigger opportunity to demonstrate to students the dynamic, rewarding career opportunities accounting can deliver.”