Honors Program

Midway Honors

Date of Award

5-2021

Thesis Professor(s)

Michelle Freeman

Thesis Professor Department

Accountancy

Thesis Reader(s)

Joel Faidley

Abstract

Becoming a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) is the goal of many aspiring accountants. Universities and colleges prepare students to gain the necessary skills to pass this certification exam; however, the CPA exam is increasingly difficult, and students continuously struggle trying to pass all four parts of the CPA exam. The goal of this research project is to gain a better understanding of how ETSU can better prepare students to become CPA exam ready, since this certification leads to increased job opportunities, pay, etc. A survey was sent out to 90 previous graduate students at ETSU with both multiple choice and open-ended response questions. The data was analyzed qualitatively since 16 people responded, and broad conclusions of the results were assessed. Questions in the survey asked students to give their input on how ETSU can improve the Master of Accountancy (M.Acc.) program, identify parts of the CPA exam that were troublesome and easy, how prepared students felt for the CPA exam, etc. The findings of this survey presented a wide range of opinions on ETSU’s ability to prepare students for the CPA exam and offered valuable insight to be considered.

Publisher

East Tennessee State University

Document Type

Honors Thesis - Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

Included in

Accounting Commons

Share

COinS