Addressing the Shortage of Accounting Faculty: Using Non-Tenure-Track Positions

Abstract

ABSTRACT A serious imbalance between the supply of and demand for doctorally-qualified accounting faculty exists in the United States. Recent research shows that this shortage is likely to become more severe in the next five to ten years if no new action is taken. This paper outlines factors that have led to the accounting faculty shortage, then examines the likelihood that those factors will change or that schools of business will be able to respond to those factors or their effects in the near future. The paper identifies one strategy that business schools might use to alleviate the shortage, the use of non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty, and then reports the results of two studies that assess the extent to which that strategy is being undertaken by business schools that have doctoral programs in accounting. The paper includes commentary on how business schools, individually or collectively through organizations such as the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), might cope with this accounting faculty shortage. The paper concludes with a discussion of our studies' limitations and offers suggestions for future research. INTRODUCTION An increasing shortage of doctorally qualified accounting faculty has been documented in recent years. This shortage is due to both supply and demand issues; specifically, the supply of PhDs in accounting is near an all time low, while the demand is near an all time high. On the supply side, fewer and fewer students are graduating with doctoral degrees in accounting. On the demand side, a significant number of tenured accounting faculty are nearing retirement. At the same time, the professional demand for graduates in accounting is growing, which increases the demand for accounting faculty. This leaves an increasing number of faculty openings in accounting at universities across the United States at the time when demand for professional accountants is also rising. Accrediting agencies such as the AACSB have standards for the mix of academically qualified (AQ) and professionally qualified (PQ) faculty that business schools should use to meet their objectives. The ability of business schools to meet these standards is reduced by a shortage of accounting faculty, especially a shortage of doctorally-trained accounting faculty. The ability of business schools to meet AACSB accreditation standards proxies for a larger issue: the ability of business schools to maintain or improve the quality of the education they offer. A persistent quality impairment could threaten not only accounting education, but business education as a whole because accounting principles courses make up a significant part of the core curriculum at most schools of business. In the research reported here, we establish the existence of the accounting faculty shortage, outline the AACSB guidelines that restrict the range of solutions to the shortage by hiring faculty from pools other than the traditional source, accounting doctoral programs, and examine how some business schools have attempted to reduce the impact of the shortage on their operations by hiring NTT faculty. In the empirical part of the research, we conduct one study of archival data on faculty employment published in the Hasselback (1988, 2006) directories and a second study of archival data published by universities on their Web sites. Our analysis of these data show that some business schools; in particular, those with doctoral programs in accounting; have responded to the increasing shortage of doctorally qualified accounting faculty by hiring more NTT faculty. We then discuss the implications of these results for AACSB accreditation as well as the quality of accounting education in the United States. THE SHORTAGE OF DOCTORALLY-QUALIFIED ACCOUNTING FACULTY The shortage of accounting faculty, like all such conditions in a market, results from an imbalance of demand and supply. In the market for accounting faculty, the demand is driven by the number of students majoring in accounting in business schools and, to a lesser extent, by the number of students enrolled in other business school majors (most business schools require all majors to take one or two courses in introductory accounting). …