Barriers to professional entry: how effective is the 150-hour rule?

Abstract

Policy debates about the 150-hour rule have taken place without information regarding the marginal impacts that education has on CPA exam success. We find that education is a relatively weak input. An increase from the traditional undergraduate requirement of 128 credit hours to 150 hours is equivalent to a four-percentile increment in a candidate's mathematics aptitude. Among inputs that might be more direct substitutes, we observe that the “extra” 22 hours is offset by two-thirds of a review course on one exam section. Our results explain why several states have recently adopted the 120/150 rule, which removes the 150-hour constraint from the exam. Since the CPA exam will be soon changing to address a broader range of competencies, the results of this study also provide a baseline for policy makers to assess the impact of educational requirements on future entry.