This summer on campus, accounting courses generate interest

Students finding jobs despite the weak economy

SAN DIEGO - The weather is balmy and the local beaches are inviting, so naturally San Diego State students are thinking about . . . accounting.

Yes, accounting. It has become one of the hot courses on campus.

Enrollment is up, one of the accounting lecturers twice has been named professor of the year, and several dozen students spent their summer mornings in a class poring over a 3-inch-thick tome titled "Federal Taxation."

The class is Accounting 321: Integrative Accounting Topics, chockablock with discussions of interest, dividends, municipal bonds and the perils and joys of partnerships. Informally, it is known as accounting boot camp. There were no spare seats.

Part of the answer to accounting's new rise might be the inherent romance of business. Then there is this fact: Even in a downish economy, accounting students are finding jobs - jobs that just might be the first step toward running their own company, or claiming that corner office in an established business.

"People think it's boring, but it's not," said Chris Tartre, 19, of Poway, in north San Diego County. "It tells you how business actually works. When you deal with numbers, it's either right or it's wrong."

The boom in accounting at San Diego State is part of a national trend.

Enrollment in accounting classes is up 19 percent since 2004, according to a survey by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

The increase in interest has left some campuses unable to accommodate all comers. In fact, the survey found that 13 percent of campuses had to turn away students who wanted to study accounting because of lack of adequate classroom space or faculty.

Among other factors leading to the rise, the institute notes, is the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation that calls for more stringent financial disclosure among American businesses. Last year, US campuses graduated 64,221 students with bachelor's or master's degrees in accounting, the most since the institute began its annual survey in 1970.

Anyone who thinks that an accounting class has to be a notch below a trip to the dentist's office has not met lecturer Will Snyder. In his Accounting 321, he radiates excitement for getting the debits and credits straight, for paying only that tax you really owe.

"I think it's important to share the passion," said Snyder, adding that the green eyeshade view of the accountant is old-fashioned.

"The beans still need counting, but counting is not enough. You have to be a global thinker, an economist, somebody with judgment and ethics," he said.

Snyder warns his students that tinkering with numbers, particularly when shareholders and the Internal Revenue Service are watching, is strictly forbidden. Profit and loss are sacred, he said.

"It should be the same at the beginning of the year as at the end of the previous year," Snyder told the group. "Creative accounting may come up with something else - but we don't want to go there."

Snyder has been on the faculty at San Diego State since 1989 and this year was named, for the second year in a row, "Best of State" in a student-run poll.

Accounting 321 at San Diego State requires 30 hours of homework a week. Anyone can take an accounting class, but students have to wait until their junior year and possess a 2.9 grade point average to declare as accounting majors. Some will decide later to transfer to something less rigorous - which is OK with the faculty.

"If it were easy," Snyder said, "everybody would be doing it."