Accounting enrollment up for third straight year

The accounting world is finally getting some good news.

Undergraduate enrollment in accounting is up for the third year in a row, according to National Student Clearinghouse data. It rose 7.3% year over year in fall 2025, outpacing the 1.2% growth in enrollment in all majors, the Journal of Accountancy reported.

That’s not quite as high as the 11.3% growth in undergraduate accounting majors seen in fall 2024, but it’s still a welcome sign for the profession, given that undergraduate enrollment in accounting fell 16.9% between 2012 and 2021.

The rise in accounting majors suggests “students are recognizing that accounting careers do represent stability,” Michael Decker, vice president of the CPA Examination and pipeline for the AICPA, told CFO Brew.

Decker believes the shift indicates that the work by the profession’s stakeholders to mitigate the accounting shortage has paid off. “I think state societies are sending better messages and are out in front of high school students and college students,” he said. “I think firms have done an amazing job. They focused on increasing starting salaries” and on “work-life balance and attracting students.”

Students are also choosing accounting over other business-related majors more often: 1 in 8 business majors at the undergraduate level is an accounting major, compared with 1 in 9 in 2023. That could be a sign that accounting is proving to be as valuable, or more so, than other numbers-heavy career paths like finance, which typically offer graduates higher starting salaries.

The uncertain US economy and job market may also be influencing students’ choice of major, Decker said. “They’re looking for flexibility, they’re looking for stability. They are looking to do something meaningful,” he said. “And I think accounting plays a role there.”

Graduate student enrollment in accounting rose only half a percentage point in 2025, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. Though that increase is small, it marks the first year since 2019 that graduate enrollments have increased rather than shrank. The effect of new pathways to CPA licensure on students’ decisions to pursue graduate study is still being evaluated by the AICPA, Decker said. In 2025, the Department of Education declared that accounting was not considered a “professional” degree; if the decision stands, the amount of money students can borrow for graduate study in accounting will be capped, which could affect enrollments.

The AICPA can’t afford to rest easy when it comes to the accounting pipeline, Decker said, noting that factors like the college “enrollment cliff” and immigration policy could cause a decline in college student populations. “Enrollments are up, but we're going to do everything we can to make sure [students] graduate, and then to make sure they convert to CPA candidates and then sit for the exam,” he said.