Bureau for placements

              The Accounting Historians Journal
Vol. 10, No. 2
Fall 1983
Elliott L. Slocum and
Alfred R. Roberts GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY
THE BUREAU FOR PLACEMENTS
Abstract: The Bureau for Placements sought to encourage qualified college graduates to choose public accounting as a career, to place them with public accounting firms, and to remove the problem of seasonal employment. During its six years of operations, the Bureau published and distributed to college students thousands of copies of the first Institute pamphlet on careers in public account-ing, and it placed 250 college graduates with public accounting firms. As a result, the Bureau started, or at least accelerated, the trend by public accounting firms toward the hiring of college graduates.
Only in recent years has it been generally accepted that entry level positions in public accounting require a college education. Certainly such acceptance would have to be placed in the post-World War II period. In the decade prior to World War II a college education had become desirable, but was not required. Larger proportions of those entering public accounting, approximately half, were college graduates, and public accounting firms were more actively recruiting college graduates. As of 1938, New York State required applicants for the CPA examination to have a college degree and also required completion of specified accounting courses. Prior to World War I, and to a large extent in the 1920s, the profession did not require a college education, and many mem-bers of the profession did not believe college training was desirable.
At the turn of the century, only five colleges or universities taught commerce and accounting courses, and very few accounting prac-titioners had any formal college education. Eighty years later, the baccalaureate degree with a major in accounting is generally re-quired, and many believe a master's degree should be required.
The change in attitude by public accountants toward the employ-ment of college graduates can be traced, in some measure, to the efforts of the Bureau for Placements of the American Institute of Accountants. In this paper we will review briefly the environment of accountancy and education prior to the establishment of the