Accounting Major

William A. Grubbs, Sulon Bibb Stedman Professor of Accounting, Chair

Raymond E. Johnson, Associate Professor
H. Garland Granger III, Associate Professor
Art Boyett, Visiting Assistant Professor

The increasing complexity of business, government, and industry demands that able, well-educated persons be available to assume positions of responsibility. The preparation that accounting students receive at Guilford College-the breadth of liberal arts-is designed to qualify them to cope successfully with today's ever-changing environment. Graduates of the program can seek the challenge of a career in public accounting or respond to the demand for persons in industrial and governmental accounting. Others choose to use their accounting background as a way of joining the ranks of management in various organizations.

Degrees Offered

A Bachelor of Science degree is offered. The Bachelor of Science degree program consists of eight major courses and five Common Body of Knowledge Courses.

CPA Examination. Guilford College accounting graduates may sit for the CPA Examination in North Carolina in the semester in which they graduate.

Approach to the 150-Hour Requirement. Most states now require 150 semester hours of coursework to complete the educational requirement for a CPA license. Since Guilford students normally graduate with 128 semester hours of credit, the Accounting Department offers a series of five two-semester-hour credit modules of business law so that our students may graduate with 138 semester hours of credit. This program permits a full-time traditional student to register for an extra two hours of college credit (for free) in each of the last five semesters at the college. These modules are taught on video-tapes and on an independent study basis.

The major advantage of the 138-hour program is that it allows the student to attend summer school for one summer, complete the 150-hour requirement, and save the cost of a fifth year of college. Using this program, a Guilford student may graduate with a degree in accounting, sit for the CPA Exam, and complete the 150-hour requirement within four years and a summer of study.

Major Requirements

The accounting major provides a structure within which students gain exposure to the primary area of accounting and receive a basic grounding in statistics, economics, computers, and finance. The entire major consists of 13 courses (52 credit hours): eight accounting courses and five Common Body of Knowledge courses.

The eight required accounting courses are ACCT 201, 301, 302, 303, 311, plus three accounting electives chosen from the 300 and 400 level.

The six Common Body of Knowledge courses are ECON 221: Macroeconomic Principles; MATH 112: Elementary Statistics; BUS 241: Computers and Management; BUS 332: Financial Management I; and a capstone course such as IDS 402: Business Ethics.