AICPA Offers Scholarships for Minority Accounting Students

AICPA Offers Scholarships for Minority Accounting Students

For more than 20 years, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) has provided merit-based financial aid to outstanding minority students from all over the country who demonstrate exceptional potential and the desire to explore a career in certified public accounting.

Every August, exceptional students of all ages, ranging from high school to the college graduate studies level, receive $5,000 for use during the upcoming academic year through the Institute’s Minority Accounting Students scholarship program.

The scholarship, applicable to students of Black, Native American, Alaskan Native, Pacific Island or Hispanic ethnic origin, was founded in the hopes of encouraging historically underrepresented young minorities to first select accounting as a major, and, ultimately, enter into the profession as a career.

“We have to combat the overall shortage of minorities in the accounting profession,” said Daniel B. Hobson, Manager, AICPA Minority Initiatives, and a member of the NYSSCPA. “We have to make the numbers better by making students more aware of this profession and by encouraging them to do well.

“So, for one, we have the scholarship program providing funding and helping us to identify the students who are on the CPA track,” said Hobson, who himself received the Scholarship for Minority Accounting Students in 1987. “And second, from that point on, we can start a dialogue with them to help them to meet their goals.

“Public accounting is like a funnel,” he said. “It’s a spot from which so many different positions can open up for them.”
In 1969, the AICPA Council formally created the Minority Initiatives Committee (MIC), a national campaign focused on actively integrating minorities into the sphere of public accounting in numbers proportional to their representation in society as a whole and, once there, enhancing their upward mobility within the profession.

The Scholarship for Minority Accounting Students was the first program initiated by the MIC, and it continues to be popular, Hobson said. The committee receives, on average, some 300 applications each year and is able to grant aid to around half of those candidates.

In the years since its launch, the committee has altered its “metrics” and created, said Hobson, “new benchmarks” to help choose qualified candidates more efficiently. In 2001, the committee changed its requirements for the scholarship to include community service, a grade point average of at least 3.3 and some previous exposure to the profession through internships or past work experience. For 2006–2007, applicants are required to become an AICPA affiliate member.

“The scholarship has evolved quite a bit since it began,” said Hobson. “In the 1970s, we were just trying to help people of color find themselves in any field related to business.

“Now we try to select candidates by really focusing on the ones who seem most likely to become CPAs,” he said.

“There are many scholarships out there, like the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, that are just to pay for college,” said Hobson. “But our focus is on the student becoming a CPA, which is critical to our members, who want us to make a difference in their field in terms of diversity.”

The scholarship creates a win-win situation for everyone involved, Hobson said.

“Anecdotally, over the past few years, after 9/11 and the economy began to slow down, we saw many companies having to let people go, but the accounting profession still needed people,” said Hobson.

“Someone who is 23 and coming out of college can become a manager by 29, a senior manager by 32, and after that they can move on and become directors and controllers or get into other good positions,” he said.

In addition to the Scholarship for Minority Accounting Students, the MIC offers numerous other academic-aid and mentoring opportunities, including the Accounting Scholars Leadership Workshop, StartHereGoPlaces.com—a free Web site with links to study information, internship listings and simulation games—and 360 Degrees of Financial Literacy, a program designed to encourage CPAs to volunteer and educate the American public on financial topics.

For more information on the Scholarship for Minority Accounting Students or for details on other scholarship support and faculty development programs offered by the AICPA and the MIC, please visit www.aicpa.org/diversity.