Abstract The article assesses the effectiveness of the 150-hour educational requirement made by the Committee on Professional Accounting Education (CPAE) in the state of Utah for certified public accountants. The strategy recommended by the CPAE, and the one that has been pursued over the past several years, has been that of seeking a legislative mandate for additional educational requirements. The strategy of mandating the 150-hour requirement, however, has met with less than glowing success. Since the report of the CPAE, no large states, such as California, New York, and Texas, have been successful in enacting a 150-hour requirement. In fact, since 1983, only Tennessee has passed a bill requiring 150 hours of education. Examination of the Utah experience provides insight regarding the nature of the opposition to a mandated strategy. Moreover, the Utah experience and the provisions of its current law suggest that the use of legislative incentives to achieve the objective of the extra educational requirements may be a politically viable strategy, and, consequently, superior to the strategy of mandating the requirements.
Deppe et al. (Wed,) studied this question.