How Well Did UMPI's BA in Accounting Actually Teach You Accounting?

[AccountingForThis]

Hello! I am strongly considering attending UMPI to earn my BA in Accounting with the goal of eventually becoming a CPA. Unfortunately, I have read some posts on this forum and others claiming that the accounting courses are not rigorous/up-to-date enough to sufficiently teach the material (at least to those of us without previous accounting experience).

For those of you who have completed this degree or are in the process of doing so, do you feel like the courses were sufficient? Do you feel like they prepared you to work in accounting? If you took the CPA exam (or any other accounting qualification exam) afterwards, do you feel like the courses gave you a decent foundation from which to review or did you end up basically having to learn everything from scratch?

UMPI would be the fastest and cheapest option in my situation, but if I have to spend considerably more time studying afterwards then I’m not sure it would be the best/most efficient…

[freeloader]

I took financial & individual tax at a community college, managerial at my local flagship state university, cost & accounting information systems at University of the Cumberlands, and the rest of my UG accounting courses at UMPI.

I definitely learned and retained the most at my local flagship. It was a very rigorous course and was the most frequently failed and repeated accounting course at the university. (Intermediate was the weed out for accounting majors, managerial accounting and intro to finance were the wee outs for non-accounting business majors at this university)

The community college, university of the Cumberlands, and UMPI were probably pretty comparable in terms of how much I learned and retained.  Realistically, I probably forgot most of what I learned at all of these institutions, but if I come across something and need it for my work, I look it up and my memory is jogged. That to say, the knowledge is somewhere back in my brain, at least some of it is.

Virtually nobody feels prepared to sit for the CPA or CMA exams right out of college without a prep course. So, if people are unprepared with only the UMPI degree, that isn’t a valid criticism IMHO.

I intentionally slowed down and tried to learn the material. I typically took 1 and never more than 2 accounting classes in a session. If you finish a class in a week or two, you probably aren’t going to retain a lot of the information.  If someone does 10 accounting courses in 15 weeks, good for them being able to speed-run through the courses, but it isn’t reasonable if they turn around and complain that they don’t retain what they learned long-term. That isn’t how the vast majority of people’s brains work.

If you actually read the materials, work through problems and examples, and really try to learn and understand the material, I think the UMPI accounting program is great. If you want a degree as fast as humanly possible and just want to cram enough to pass your classes and don’t care about retention, the UMPI accounting program is great. But don’t think you can speed run and cram and expect to retain a lot. You can go to Indiana University or the University of Texas or one of the other premier accounting programs and if you just cram and don’t try to learn, you won’t retain a lot. That’s more a criticism of the learner than the university/program.  With the UMPI CBE program, it is just easier to cram and churn than at those other places.  

While a lot of people move very quickly through the UMPI program, there is nothing wrong with slowing down a bit. Take two courses per period, if you want, and take the allotted time to finish them. That’s a “normal” course load of 12-18 credits per semester, exactly what you would take at a “normal” university.  If you actually study, you will learn and retain a great deal. That’s basically what I did and then accelerated my non-accounting courses, the things that are decidedly less important for me as an accountant.

To my mind, the people criticizing UMPI are basically saying they were not mature enough to take their studies seriously and actually learn something. They required a university that would force them to do myriad quizzes, homework sets, and multiple exams per course, otherwise they would not learn. This is university. You are supposed to be an adult. For aspiring accountants, this is a degree to prepare you for your chosen profession. If you are serious about your profession then take your education seriously. You can rent the textbooks from Amazon and watch some YouTube videos and learn just as much as if you sit in a classroom in Austin, TX for 4 years. But most people won’t do that, because they lack motivation to actually learn and need to be forced to do it. Are you motivated and will you actually try to learn on your own or do you need more handholding, OP?  If you need more structure, that’s fine. Not a thing wrong with that. But your own educational needs (or those of other UMPI critics) don’t invalidate or demean the education that is available at UMPI. Whether or not you avail yourself of it is something else entirely…

[bjcheung77]

Virtually nobody feels prepared to sit for the CPA or CMA exams right out of college without a prep course. So, if people are unprepared with only the UMPI degree, that isn’t a valid criticism IMHO.

I intentionally slowed down and tried to learn the material. I typically took 1 and never more than 2 accounting classes in a session. If you finish a class in a week or two, you probably aren’t going to retain a lot of the information.  If someone does 10 accounting courses in 15 weeks, good for them being able to speed-run through the courses, but it isn’t reasonable if they turn around and complain that they don’t retain what they learned long-term. That isn’t how the vast majority of people’s brains work.

If you actually read the materials, work through problems and examples, and really try to learn and understand the material, I think the UMPI accounting program is great. If you want a degree as fast as humanly possible and just want to cram enough to pass your classes and don’t care about retention, the UMPI accounting program is great. But don’t think you can speed run and cram and expect to retain a lot.

This snippet pretty much summed up what I wanted to type... Everyone learns differently, an institution is supposed to teach you a class and the student is supposed to study the material for that specific class. Institutions use different learning systems, teachers, text, etc, there are so many variables at play, you will learn 'the basics of the material or subject'.

Having said that, content at one college may be similar but not identical to another college, this goes with alternative providers as well. It's up to the student to 'study' what is taught at each school and supplement it with the trifecta of certs, degree, experience to get really familiar with the subject matter. You then need to ladder upwards to know more...

This is the same for any subject, an example, you take 5 Biology classes with various names, it really doesn't teach you the entire subject as there are so many sub categories or sub fields, that's why there are many more classes in undergrad and graduate school, when you're at the undergrad level, that's the tip of the ice burg, it opens 'specific' doors...