Title

Barriers To Professional Entry: How Effective Is The 150-Hour Rule?

Keywords

150-hour rule; CPA exam; Elasticity

Abstract

Policy debates about the 150-hour rule have taken place without information regarding the marginal impacts that education has on CPA exam success. We find that education is a relatively weak input. An increase from the traditional undergraduate requirement of 128 credit hours to 150 hours is equivalent to a four-percentile increment in a candidate's mathematics aptitude. Among inputs that might be more direct substitutes, we observe that the "extra" 22 hours is offset by two-thirds of a review course on one exam section. Our results explain why several states have recently adopted the 120/150 rule, which removes the 150-hour constraint from the exam. Since the CPA exam will be soon changing to address a broader range of competencies, the results of this study also provide a baseline for policy makers to assess the impact of educational requirements on future entry. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Publication Date

4-10-2002

Publication Title

Journal of Accounting and Public Policy

Volume

21

Issue

1

Number of Pages

71-93

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0278-4254(02)00037-6

Socpus ID

0036201633 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/0036201633

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