The Maryland State Board of Public Accountancy approved a proposal to change the requirements to sit for the CPA Exam.

The proposal would change the requirements from 150 hours of education to a modified model that would allow candidates to sit for the exam after completing 120 hours of college education (meeting the accounting or “group I requirements) and then receive their license upon completion of the 150 hours (and all group 2 & 3 requirements).

According to the Board, this change is necessary for two iimportant reasons: 1) To allow students to sit closest to the time when they have completed core accounting technical subjects; and 2) to keep Maryland competitive with our surrounding states (all of our surrounding states have enacted this clause and the total is now over 29). MACPA's own Richard Rabicoff and several of our student members were at the hearing to provide their feedback. See Richard's post on our TCPA blog

The Board did a comprehensive outreach to educators, students, and the CPA profession. results from MACPA townhall meetings indicate almost unanimous support for this proposal. Pictured above is the feedback session with students that the Board held in April. You can read the Board's account of this process and recommendation in their new newsletter The Account Balance.

I want to acknowledge the Board's leadership under Chairman Tom Chambers for running a very effective study and feedback process as they considered this proposal.

This proposal will now go to the DLLR for consideration to be introduced as Department legislation in the 2010 session of the Maryland General Assembly. Our Legislative Executive Committee and Board of Directors will disucss and form MACPA's position on this in upcoming meetings.

What do you think?