Colleges Inject AI Into Accounting Programs to Increase Appeal

Peter Demerjian was in a bind when he took over Georgia State University’s accounting school in 2022. In a 10-year period, the program had lost 40% of its undergraduate majors and more than two-thirds of its master’s students, he said.

His solution after talking with students, alumni, and firm leaders: inject some tech.

“This is a way to kind of supercharge the idea that it’s a data field; it’s a technology field,” said Demerjian, who is launching an AI-driven master’s accounting program this fall.

Like Georgia State, schools from the University of Notre Dame to Colorado State University Global are launching or expanding classes and degree programs to prepare young accounting recruits for a field being redefined by emerging technology including artificial intelligence. They also aim to help revive a troubled talent pipeline that accountants worry puts the profession in peril.

While undergraduate accounting enrollment rebounded last fall to nearly rival levels before the coronavirus pandemic, that doesn’t necessarily signal a broader turnaround, said Mohan Kuruvilla, chair of the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants and director of the University of Houston’s master of science in accountancy program.

The rising push to marry accounting and AI in college programs mirrors the industry approach. Big Four accounting firms PwC, Ernst & Young, and KPMG have each committed $1 billion or more to generative AI.

Recruits who can harness both technology and technical accounting skills will become ideal candidates, said Derek Thomas, national partner-in-charge of university talent acquisition at KPMG US.

“One of my favorite lines is: ‘AI may not replace your job, but the person who knows how to use it will,’” Thomas said.

Practical Skills

To Brigham Young University student Braden Jones, the generative AI transformation echoes the rise of electronic spreadsheets his father, a CPA, navigated.

Because his father stayed ahead of the curve, he clinched opportunities that may have eluded others, said Jones, an undergraduate who’s pursuing an integrated master’s degree. That program enables students to earn both degrees concurrently.

Jones’ professor, David Wood, teaches students how to use AI tools, including the framework known as retrieval-augmented generation, in accounting.

Students participate in a photo audit in which they capture areas of campus that lack ramps or automatic doors and then feed that content into an AI tool prompted to act as an internal auditor and identify risks, BYU undergraduate student Ben White said.

“One of the biggest risks that people overlook is not the risk of AI destroying the world—there’s a lot of people talking about that,” Wood said. It’s “what if we don’t embrace it? What if accountants don’t get on board?”

Colorado State University Global students are using tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini to analyze financial reports, according to Tanae Wolo Acolatse, CSU Global’s undergraduate accounting program manager.

At the University of Southern California, accounting professor Dan O’Leary teaches graduate students about neural networks, a machine learning process mimicking brain functions to analyze data and recognize patterns.

While Kayla Hohenstein said she gained technical knowledge during O’Leary’s course in her master’s program—which lasted from 2019 to 2020—the largest benefit was exposure to the breadth of emerging technologies.

“Having that open-ended approach to technology and what the evolution could look like is really helpful,” said Hohenstein, who joined KPMG full-time after graduation and is now manager of KPMG Audit – Audit Transformation.

Student Outreach

Universities are trying several strategies to appeal to Generation Z interests in AI, from offering master’s programs to exposing students to firms’ AI integration.

“In general, students today are much more data driven,” said Christine Cheng, assistant professor at the University of Mississippi.

AI consistently came up in conversations with Georgia State students, alumni, recruiters, and accountants about where the profession is headed, said Demerjian, director of the accountancy school.

The university will launch a “Master of Interdisciplinary Studies in Data Science and Accounting” in the fall, focused on technical expertise.

The market might not fully understand the new degree yet, Demerjian said, “but I suspect when we have the product out there, they’re going to realize it’s what they were looking for all along.”

To expose students to how firms are using AI, Brad Badertscher—department chair of accountancy at Notre Dame—said he’s planning a class this fall that will host guest industry speakers.

Still, the profession struggles with a “tough value proposition” given it offers lower starting salaries than the computer science or finance sectors, Nick Hallman, associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said.

“This is not a way to get ahead,” Hallman said about integrating AI. “This is a way to not lose more ground.”

Industry Advantage

Students with AI skills are in demand in the accounting industry, said Elizabeth Burkhalter, the associate director of CPA pipeline at the American Institute of CPAs.

“We’ll continue to have developers, but those who can figure out how to go farther and faster with AI will ultimately be more competitive,” Jen Clark, a director in EisnerAmper’s technology enablement advisory group, said in a statement.

Daren Campbell, tax technology and transformation leader for EY Americas, emphasized that recruits don’t need a computer science degree—they need to be competent with data.

Firms are giving universities resources to stay up-to-date on the industry’s current AI use.

“We have as much of an obligation to train our people when they get here as we do to make sure that universities understand what is expected of their students, so that they can be successful when they get here,” Margaret Burke, firmwide talent acquisition & development leader at PwC US, said in a statement.

KPMG gives case studies to professors, with activities such as calculating loan amortization in Excel using AI, Thomas said.

Moving forward, Jones, the BYU student, said he isn’t nervous about how AI will impact his career.

If the industry is changing, “then I’ll change with it so I don’t get left behind,” Jones said.