BG, Ashland sign agreement for accountancy program

BOWLING GREEN, O.—Ashland University graduates with a bachelor’s degree in accounting can now pursue a master’s degree, and prepare for the Certified Public Accountant exam, at Bowling Green State University.

Representatives of the two universities have signed an articulation agreement providing seamless entry into BGSU’s master of accountancy (MAcc) program for Ashland graduates who majored in accounting while earning a bachelor of business administration degree.

Those students complete 128 credit hours, and 150 hours are needed to take the CPA exam, noted Dr. Kristine Parsons, an associate professor of business at Ashland. “This is an opportunity for our students to earn the hours needed for the CPA exam and earn a master’s degree,” she said. “We will encourage students interested in this program to apply during their junior years.”

Ashland is among dozens of institutions in the United States and abroad with which BGSU’s Department of Accounting and Management Information Systems (AMIS) has developed recruiting relationships in the last decade due to the master of accountancy program, said Dr. Alan Lord, the program director and Ernst & Young Professor of Accounting at Bowling Green. Most of them, including Ashland, don’t have a similar graduate program, and “BGSU serves as a primary alternative for graduate education for the accounting students from these schools,” he said.

The AMIS department has developed an articulation agreement for use with many prospective partner institutions, “to establish a formal and defined path that students can pursue and be guaranteed admittance to the BGSU MAcc program as early as the end of a student’s junior year,” Lord explained.

Program provides “clear path” to graduate education

The agreement is expected to enhance the participating institutions’ ability to recruit highly qualified accounting students because of that “clear path” to a graduate education, he said. It also may lead to students making their choice of a graduate university earlier in their undergraduate career,” he continued, saying that as those earlier decisions are made, BGSU would benefit from access to a larger number of highly qualified applicants for its program.

The MAcc program is nationally recognized, Lord said, for the diversity in its student body, which includes graduates of colleges and universities outside the United States as well as students who have earned undergraduate degrees from BGSU and other U.S. institutions.

Parsons pointed out the benefits to Ashland students beyond the classroom. “By earning a master’s degree and passing the CPA exam, our accounting graduates would have many career options,” she said. “With one extra year of study, Ashland graduates will have opportunities to join major accounting firms, which typically require the CPA designation.”

Dr. Rodney Rogers, dean of BGSU’s College of Business Administration, called the agreement “a ‘win-win’ opportunity to partner with Ashland University.” Echoing that sentiment was Dr. James Maxwell, the current chair of Bowling Green’s Department of Visual Communication and Technology Education but, as of July 1, dean of the Dauch College of Business and Economics at Ashland.

“Ashland students are hoping they can continue on in accounting, and BGSU is satisfying a need they have,” Maxwell said.

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Media Contact: Scott Borgelt, BGSU Marketing & Communications.

(Posted April 10, 2008 )