Program development proposal

The College of Business at Ohio University proposes re-establishing the Master of Accounting (MAcc) degree. A graduate degree in Accounting was previously approved and offered by the college. However, this program has been dormant since 2005. According to the current Ohio Department of Education CCGS guidelines, any graduate program that has been dormant or not offered in at least five years must be treated as a new graduate program and follow the Program Development (PDP) and Full Proposal processes outlined by CCGS.

Because students who wish to sit for the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) certification must complete at least 150 semester hours of coursework to meet Ohio guidelines, it is quite common for many Accounting Departments to offer an on-campus MAcc degree so that students completing the 150 hour requirement may earn a Bachelor’s degree and a MAcc degree while enrolled in the undergraduate program. With strong advising and planning, both degrees can be earned in four years but it is more common for Accounting students to spend 4 ½ to 5 years in school.

The demand for a MAcc is so strong that Ohio University’s College of Business may be the only AACSB-accredited college in the state without a similar graduate degree. Based on a brief scan of other public and private business schools in Ohio, the following universities appear to currently offer a MAcc degree: Kent State, Akron, Cleveland State, Toledo, Bowling Green, Ohio State, Miami, University of Cincinnati, Wright State, Dayton, John Carroll, Xavier, and Case Western Reserve. Based on proposal recently posted in the CCGS system, it appears Youngstown State will also add a MAcc degree.

The college currently graduates approximately 100 students each year with a BBA in Accounting, and many of these students plan to sit for the CPA exam soon after graduation. For those students that currently earn 150 hours on campus, most complete additional undergraduate degrees, minors, or certificates.

As the proposed curriculum below indicates, the proposed focus of the program will be to provide students with additional training and preparation to sit for the Uniform CPA exam. However, a key focus and distinguishing feature of the program will be Business Analytics. While many of the classes in the curriculum represent common topics found in other MAcc programs, this proposal includes three required Business Analytics courses. The heavy emphasis on Analytics is based on industry demand and key feedback received from employers and at national, regional, and state conferences. It should be noted that the three proposed graduate analytics courses have already been approved and offered in the college’s On-Line and Hybrid Professional MBA Programs. The ability to deliver these existing courses in an on-line, or more likely hybrid approach, to the college’s on-campus MAcc students provides tremendous flexibility for the students as they simultaneously complete both degrees. If desired, students could complete one of these courses while completing an internship.

The College of Business will likely be the only college participating in the program. However, graduate-qualified faculty members from multiple departments may be involved in teaching courses, including Accounting, Finance, MIS, and Operations.

The MAcc Program will be administered by the School of Accountancy. The incoming Director of the School of Accountancy has experience beginning and growing an on-campus MAcc program at another residential university in Ohio. He will continue to work with the Associate Dean of Academic Programs during the approval of the program through the CCGS process and the development of new and updated curriculum. Once established, the department will appoint an internal faculty member to be the MAcc Program Director. This director will be compensated similar to other faculty graduate program directors within the college, including an appropriate stipend and course release.

In the beginning only current BBA Accounting students in the Ohio program will be admitted to the MAcc. The college will implement admission standards and processes (e.g. 3.0 GPA, applications, selection process) consistent with current graduate admissions criteria and in partnership with the college’s current graduate staff, which supports over 900 students in various graduate platforms. The MAcc Program Director will be responsible for collaborating with the graduate staff and work with the Accounting School Director on the staffing of courses. At some point, the program may admit students with non-Accounting undergraduate degrees into the on-campus program. However, because this target market would likely be required to complete several foundation courses before fully entering the program, this market will be pursued after the on-campus cohort is established.

As mentioned in a previous section, it appears that every accredited public and private school in Ohio is currently offering an on-campus MAcc degree. While competition remains intense in the broader MBA Market, a 2015 Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) report on Application Trends reports that applications for 1-Year Full-Time MBA applications are up slightly for U.S. programs, with 43% of programs reporting an increase in applications this year compared to 41% in 2014. While demand for traditional on-campus MBA Programs has shifted significantly to on-line or hybrid formats, another trend business schools are using to compete is the development of graduate degrees with a specialized focus such as a Master’s in Management, Finance, or Analytics (“The New Business of B-Schools,” by Sherrie Negrea, www.universitybusiness.com, February 2016).

According to the GMAC 2015 Application Trends Report, the Master of Accountancy specialized degree has experienced a slight decrease in applications, with 47% of programs reporting a decrease in applications compared to 39% the previous year. However, “the academic quality of candidates remains high in Master’s of Accounting programs in 2015, as 87 percent of programs report their applicant pool for the incoming class is as qualified (57%) or more qualified (30%) than last year’s class. And even with a slight decrease in the number of applicants, the median number of applicants across programs is 126 with a median class size of 51” (GMAC 2015 Applications Trends Report).

5. Prospective enrollment.

With expected approval of the Full Proposal by Ohio University and the Ohio Department of Education by early 2017, the college plans to begin offering this MAcc Program to current on-campus students no later than Fall Semester 2017. The college’s goal will be to attain 10-15 admitted students during the 2017-18 AY and grow to 25-30 students in 2018-19 AY and achieve a steady state program enrollment of at least 40 students by the third year. The incoming Director of the School of Accountancy recently launched a MAcc Program in Ohio and was able to reach 30 students enrolled in the program full-time by Year 2.

Like most institutions, Ohio University and the College of Business define diversity broadly. However, the college is actively trying to increase the ethnic and gender diversity of the student body. The college has offered the Junior Executive Business Program Summer Recruiting Program for over a decade – it is a model being considered by other units on campus and has been successful at increasing the number of ethnically diverse and multicultural students in the college. The Director of the Junior Executive Business Program is Beatrice Selotlegeng. Beatrice actively diverse high school students from the region to participate in an 8-day on-campus program each summer. Beatrice also partners with faculty members in the college to mentor those diverse students that attend Ohio University and serves as the faculty mentor for two diverse student organizations within the college. A description of the program can be found at the following url: http://business.ohio.edu/future-students/junior-executive-program/. The college is actively partnering with the university to become even more involved in the Cultural Connections program that is offered to admitted students from diverse backgrounds. The college also partners with the Society of Alumni and Friends to send personalized, hand-written messages to all admitted students from under-represented groups.

The college supports two female student groups – Women in Information Systems (WIS) and Women in Business (WIB). In two short years, WIB has grown to over 100 members. In addition, our Director of Marketing is implementing targeted communications and marketing strategies for prospective female business students and partners with our female student groups and alumni during the recruiting process. The college increased female undergraduate enrollment by 3% in the last recruiting class and achieved a higher percentage for female student than the national average for our latest on-campus MBA cohort.

The School of Accountancy is currently comprised of 50% full-time, female faculty members, including the current Director. Three of the four newly hired tenure-track faculty members that begin in Fall 2017 are females. It is hoped that this gender diversity will continue to help the department support the college’s gender diversity recruiting efforts and to provide ongoing role models for female business students pursuing a career in Public Accounting or a related field.

One of the primary reasons the MAcc Program was discontinued in 2005 was a lack of support or interest by many of the faculty members to lead or teach in the program. However, with the implementation of Responsibility Centered Budgeting (RCB), the college has been able to hire faculty members to replace retiring and transitioning faculty members, recruit a new Director, and hire an additional three new tenure-track faculty members. With these faculty resources in place and the ability to hire additional faculty members as the program grows, the college now has the faculty capabilities and resources available to develop and deliver the courses in the program. The college also has the ability to efficiently add future MAcc students into the existing graduate platforms for all three analytics courses.

In recent years the college has faced severe space limitations as the size of the undergraduate study body increased over 150% to 2,600 students and the graduate student body increased from approximately 200 students to over 900 students in various programs. Copeland Hall, the current home for the college, was designed to support a student body of approximately 1700 students. However, by the summer of 2016, the renovation of the adjacent CSC Building will be complete and the college will have enough classroom, office, and meeting space to support all of the faculty, staff, in students in the college.

8. Need for additional facilities and staff and the plans to meet this need.

The college does not anticipate the need for additional facilities to deliver this program once the college encompasses two buildings. And with the successful addition of 4 new full-time faculty members, the current staffing models for the School of Accountancy to serve its undergraduate students and launch the new MAcc program is sufficient. However, the recent growth in undergraduate and graduate programs in the college has increased the college’s revenues by over 300%. With an RCB budgeting model firmly established within university, the college has the revenues necessary to provide additional facilities and staff to support this program if necessary.