DENVER — Tax day is nearly a week away, and if someone needs help filing their return, they might have a hard time finding someone in time.
There is a nationwide accountant shortage. The University of Denver's School of Accountancy has watched the shortage grow for years as student enrollment has dropped.
"We had probably about a 40% decline in about eight years, so ours was a very slow but steady decline," said Sharon Lassar, DU's director of the School of Accountancy.
“We are a relatively small program here at the University of Denver, so a 40% decline for us is not that bad," she said. "But when you look at some really big schools that are producing 300 accounting students every year, a 50% decline, that’s a big drop in numbers across the country that we have seen in the last few years."
The low enrollment means there are fewer accountants in the workforce, which could mean it might be harder to find someone to help file all of those returns.
"Cities and towns are having a hard time getting their financial reports certified by auditors, and they put out requests for proposals and no one responds because everyone is too busy," said Lassar, who is a tax specialist. "If you move down to the individual level, it’s gotten to the point where people are calling and leaving voicemails in tears because they can’t get anyone to help them with their work."
Lassar said there are a lot of reasons why there is a shortage. She pointed to articles that indicate accountants will be replaced by robots, and she added that there are a lot of fields of interest that take less time and could possibly pay more.
"If you look at the headlines, you see artificial intelligence and robotic processing and how one of the fields that seems to be destined for being replaced by robots is accounting, and that’s so far from the truth," she said.
"Accounting students have analytics minds, and so do finance students and business information students and computer scientists and engineers and architects, and so we are competing with all these professions for the best and brightest students right now," she said. "There's a shortage of every professional field. It’s really hard sometimes to convince a student that they should study accounting when they have all these opportunities available to them."
But for some of the students the DU's accounting program, the field brings job security.
"Every accounting major I talk to has a job lined up afterwards, if not multiple jobs they can choose from," one student said.
"For me it was knowing I’d probably get a job before being finished with school so that was a big deal for my family and I," another added. "[I'm] a lot better off than some of my friends right now so, I’ll take it. I’m grateful for it."
DU said their enrollment is getting better and they're encouraged by the numbers they're seeing now. They said some companies that have been impacted by the shortage realize the easiest and most effective solution is to offer a competitive wage.
"You have to increase the pay because starting salaries is a big driver as to what students study and so in order to get more students into accounting, employers have to increase their pay," Lassar said.
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