Accounting Major

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

Raymond E. Johnson, Associate Professor
H. Garland Granger III, Associate Professor
Beth Parks, 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

The Bachelor of Science degree is offered in accounting and forensic accounting.

Students who double major in accounting and forensic accounting are required to have a minor outside the accounting department.

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 videotapes 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.

Major Requirements for B.S. degree in forensic accounting. The term “forensic” means “used in legal proceedings.”  The two components of forensic accounting are litigation support and investigative accounting. The forensic accountant is the bloodhound of the accounting profession sniffing out complex fraud shenanigans that other types of accountants often fail to detect. The preparation of students at Guilford College is designed to broaden one’s critical thinking skills through exposure to a solid liberal arts education as well as technical training. Graduates of this program can seek a career in public accounting, internal auditing, corporate accounting, the FBI, the IRS or many other types of businesses that have established forensic accounting departments.

A forensic accounting major will provide students with the skills necessary to determine techniques to prevent and detect fraud, apply analytical techniques and computer digital techniques to detect fraud, provide expert interviewing skills of possible fraud perpetrators and know the legal environment so one will be able to gather evidence legally and be capable of testifying as an expert witness in the prosecution of a fraud case.

A forensic accountant must develop a wide array of skills. One must be capable of analyzing potential fraud indicators, sniffing out evidence to support a fraud hypothesis, understand human behavior that might lead to fraud and developing excellent oral and written communication skills Guilford College provides a liberal arts education that will develop all of these skills for a forensic accountant graduate.

The degree program consists of eight (8) major courses and five (5) Common Body of Knowledge courses. These courses will not only prepare a graduate for entry into the marketplace but will also prepare the graduate to take the Certified Fraud Examiners (CFE) exam as a recognized certification for this field of study.