Accounting
In their twenties, half of marketing and general business graduates are doing something no degree was needed for. With accounting it is one in five, and the average accounting graduate earns $76,194 four years out.
Written by the Sidequest team. Reviewed 2026-09-11.
Try the career before you pick the major
The work this degree is named after is somebody handing you a month of their money records and asking whether they can be trusted. Five minutes of that will tell you more than the next two years of reading about it.
Colette's · last year's numbers
One page, and the bank reads it tomorrow
- •the two shops took in about $620,000 last year
- •the books show $1,840 more than the bank does
- •nobody at Colette's can say why
the page, before you start
The shops took in about $620,000 last year, and Colette's own records say there is $1,840 more in the bank than the bank says. How small does that difference have to get before you stop looking?
Try a day as an accountant
A short, playful taste of the real work.
Most of them become accountants, which is more checking somebody else’s records and explaining them than doing sums. About 115,300 openings come up a year.
Fifteen hours of class a week and about 30 of your own behind them. Most of the 30 is practice problems with one right answer, and from second year most of that is done in a spreadsheet.
Where people end up
Most of them become accountants, and there are four places that happens: an accounting firm, inside one company looking after its money, checking somebody else’s books, or a government agency.
Accounting firms hired 11,985 new graduates in 2024, and three in four of them had studied accounting.
Four in five accounting graduates in their twenties are in work that needed a degree. Eleven majors out of seventy four do better than that, and every one of them is nursing, engineering, teaching, computer science or construction.
What a week is like
You take four to six classes at once, which comes out to about 15 credit hours a semester. It is that same load every semester for four years: 120 credits, eight semesters, done.
About 15 of those hours are spent sitting in class. The other 30 are work you do on your own, two hours behind every hour you spend in a room. Call it 45 hours a week.
It is spread across seven days rather than stacked into five, so you can keep your evenings or you can keep your weekends, not usually both. What it does not leave is much slack in the weeks when two big things land on the same day.
A waking week is about 112 hours. This is the share of it the degree takes.
- In class15 hours
- Work on your own30 hours
- Yours67 hours
What those 45 hours are spent on.
with other people
Two at a time for most of the degree: how a company writes down what it owns and owes, what things cost inside a business, tax, how to check whether somebody else’s records are true, and the systems those records are kept in.
with other people
Accounting sits inside the business school, so you take the same set as everybody else in it: economics, finance, marketing, management, business law and how goods get moved around.
with other people
Writing, two maths courses, a science with a lab, and something about people. Few people clear them early, and one is usually still sitting there in the last year.
on your ownthe hard part
Sets of them every week, each with an answer you either land on or do not. The two hardest courses sit in the middle of the degree, where you learn exactly how a company has to report its numbers to the outside world.
on your own
From second year you stop doing this on paper. Real records, in a spreadsheet or in the software a company would actually keep them in, and the work is getting two sets of numbers to match.
on your own
The reading behind the business classes, and the writing for the courses that have nothing to do with accounting. It is the part that gets dropped first when a problem set runs long.
- Accounting and business classes42%
- Maths and statistics19%
- Everything else you still have to take38%
- Classes you pick yourself0%
There is no accounting in the first year at all. It is writing, maths, economics and the requirements everybody has, and you pick none of it.
How much do you make?
Accounting pays $76,194 four years out, less than finance and more than marketing or general business. What separates it is the other number: about four in five accounting graduates are in work that needed a degree, against about half of marketing and general business graduates.
Right out of college
$76,194
Four years after finishing, the average accounting graduate earns $76,194, a figure for those in work, not back in school.
Midway through
$97,000
Between 35 and 45, the average accounting graduate earns $97,000.
At the height of it
$144,090
The best paid tenth of accountants and auditors earn $144,090.
Where you study moves this. Graduates of the weakest accounting programs earn $58,123 and graduates of the strongest earn $93,679, a gap of about $35,000 a year.
The degree is not the last bill. To sign off on a company’s numbers you need a license called a CPA, which is short for certified public accountant, and no route to it stops at a four year degree. You add another 30 credits, or a master’s, or a second year of working instead of one. Which of those counts depends on your state, and all three mean a year past the degree.
The average money still owed on student loans
$23,000
The standard plan clears it in ten years.
Is this you?
Accounting is the one business degree where the subject and the work have the same name, and that cuts both ways. You find out in your second year, in the first two accounting courses, whether being exact is satisfying or exhausting, because it does not let up after that. The other thing worth knowing early is that the degree does not finish it: every route to a CPA asks for a year more than a four year degree, and which route your state takes is being rewritten right now.
Tap any that sound like you.
This is probably you if
Probably not you if
What people who did it say
calderarrow, who did the degree, got the license, worked four years and then moved into software
Hacker News, January 2025
"Accounting actually is more of a trade, and I felt like the majority of classes they taught helped me on-the-job as an accountant."
newguy1234, five years out of an accounting degree and working in tax
Hacker News, September 2020
"I have never used anything remotely related to calculus. Statistics and data analytics, on the other hand, I use all the time."
QatJack, a year and a half from finishing an accounting degree
College Confidential, September 2015
"Everyone recommends that I take my CPA and continue to a public accounting firm which should later lead me to leave it and then pursue a field that I actually enjoy."
happy1, answering QatJack in the same thread
College Confidential, September 2015
"You certainly don’t have to become a CPA but it is an outstanding lifetime credential to have no matter where you end up."
Questions people ask
- Do you need a CPA to work in accounting?
- No. Nobody asks for the license when you are hired out of college, and plenty of accounting graduates work for years without one. What a CPA, a certified public accountant, is allowed to do is sign off on a company’s numbers, and reaching it takes a year of college or of working on top of the degree.
- How much college do you need before you can take the exam for the license?
- The long standing answer is 150, which is 30 more than a bachelor’s degree. Two other routes exist now: a master’s, or a bachelor’s plus two years of working instead of one. Which of them your state takes is the thing to check, because they are being adopted one state at a time.
- Is accounting a hard major?
- The wall is the two courses in the middle of the degree that teach exactly how a company has to report its numbers to the outside world, where the rules get exact and there is one right answer. The maths is smaller than people expect: two maths courses and one statistics course, and after that it is rules rather than equations.
- What is the difference between an accounting degree and a finance degree?
- Finance is about what to do with money that exists: what a thing is worth, what to buy, what to lend. Accounting is about whether the record of it is true. Finance pays more four years out, $83,343 against $76,194, and more of its graduates end up somewhere the degree was not needed.
- Will AI take accounting work?
- The government expects some of the routine work to move to software, and it still expects the work to grow about 5% by 2035 with around 115,300 openings a year. What is moving is the adding up, and what is not is deciding which differences matter and explaining them to somebody who has to act on them.
Where these numbers come from
- What accounting graduates earn four years out, how far programs vary, the loan debt, and what the neighbouring degrees pay: College Scorecard, field of study data, June 2026 release. Checked 2026-09-06.
- What share of each year is in the major, counted in credits: Arizona State University, published major map, 2024-2025. Checked 2026-09-11.
- How many years the standard loan plan runs: Code of Federal Regulations, title 34 section 685.208, the tiered standard repayment plan. Checked 2026-08-24.
- What one credit hour means in class time and work on your own: Code of Federal Regulations, title 34 section 600.2, the definition of a credit hour. Checked 2026-08-25.
- What accounting graduates earn between the ages of 35 and 45, and how many graduates of each major are in work that did not need a degree: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates. Checked 2026-09-11.
- The top tenth of pay for accountants and auditors, which this page’s height estimate is built from: Bureau of Labor Statistics, occupational employment and wage statistics, 2025, read through the public data API. Checked 2026-09-11.
- How fast the work is growing, how many openings a year, and what is expected to move to software: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, accountants and auditors, outlook 2025 to 2035. Checked 2026-09-10.
- How many people pass the hardest required part of the CPA exam: AICPA and CIMA, CPA exam scoring and pass rates, 2026 cumulative through the second quarter. Checked 2026-09-10.
- The three routes to the license, and that states are adopting them one at a time: National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, New CPA Licensure Pathways and CPA Mobility, December 23 2025. Checked 2026-09-10.
- How many new graduates accounting firms hired, and how many of them had studied accounting: AICPA, 2025 Trends report. Checked 2026-09-10.
- The courses an accounting major has to take, at a second university: University of South Carolina, undergraduate bulletin, accounting BSBA. Checked 2026-09-06.
Careers this major feeds