NASBA Proposes Changes to 150-Hour Content

There would be a greater required concentration on accounting and business under new model rules for CPA qualification that are being proposed by the Education Committee of the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy. The proposed change would increase the number of semester hours required in upper-division undergraduate-level accounting -- from 24 to 30 hours, or 20 hours at the graduate level, or an equivalent combination, and from 24 to 36 hours at the upper-division undergraduate level, or 24 at the graduate level, for business other than accounting. It would also have specific hourly requirements for both accounting and business subjects, including three hours of ethics in accounting and three hours of ethics in business. Other subjects within the accounting concentration are financial accounting and reporting for business organizations; financial accounting and reporting for government and not-for-profit entities; assurance services; taxation; management accounting; and accounting information systems. The revisions would centralize the definitions in Rule 5-1 and the application in Rule 5-2, as well as reflect greater detail on accreditation and the appropriate scrutiny accompanying each level of accreditation. Comments may be mailed to NASBA's Education Committee, c/o NASBA, 150 Fourth Avenue North, Suite 700, Nashville, Tenn., 37219; faxed to (615) 846-0149; or e-mailed to kellis@nasba.org. The draft is available at www.nasba.org/nasbaweb.nsf/pub.