Rice U. to start Master of Accounting program next year

The Jones Graduate School of Business is relaunching its one-year Master of Accounting (MAcc) program, beginning in fall 2016.

Several current Rice undergraduates have already indicated their intent to enroll in the inaugural MAcc class, according to MAcc Program Director Benjamin Lansford. Strong applicants with non-Rice undergraduate degrees will also be granted admission, he said.

Rice offered a Master of Accounting program from 1975 to 1997. While that former program was small, typically graduating fewer than 10 students each year, it produced highly successful alumni, including Jim Turley ‘77, past CEO of the global accounting firm Ernst and Young.

To help Rice create a best-of-class Master of Accounting program, Turley and Ernst and Young joined forces to create the James S. Turley-Ernst and Young Leadership Development Initiative. Geared at training future accounting professionals on how to be effective business leaders, the program will promote experiential learning and leadership development. This initiative was made possible through gifts valued at $2.5 million, including support from Turley and other prominent alumni like Tim Griffy ‘79 and Rob Royall ‘82, in addition to the generosity of the Ernst and Young Foundation and alumni employees.

One of the many unique components of the MAcc will be a dynamic Deloitte Leader-in-Residence program, which will empower the school to recruit a high profile thought leader in accounting research to work with students shoulder-to-shoulder over the course of a week or more and offer his/her professional perspective through participation in various classroom activities, hosting office hours and partaking in student-organized roundtable and panel sessions. This resource was provided through the financial support of alumni at Deloitte, chief among them Amy Sutton ‘89 and John Fogarty ‘78.

The MAcc program is being revived due to the widespread success of the initial program’s graduates and an increasing need for well-trained, adroit CPAs, Lansford said. The Rice MAcc program is specifically designed for students coming from varied undergraduate majors.

“Like other Master of Accounting programs throughout the nation, the Rice MAcc program will provide students the coursework required for CPA licensure,” said Lansford, a professor in the practice of accounting. “However, most Master of Accounting programs simply layer yet more accounting on top of an accounting major’s already large amount of undergraduate accounting coursework. A strength of Rice’s initial Master of Accounting program, and what we expect to be a primary strength of our new MAcc program, is enrolling only students with non-accounting undergraduate majors. So Rice MAcc graduates won’t solely be experts in accounting. Rice MAcc graduates will be as good at accounting as anyone else, but they’ll also have a solid grounding in philosophy, sociology, history, marketing or whatever their undergraduate major was. We are seeking to develop critical thinkers who are poised to be future leaders in the business world.”

Accounting provides an excellent opportunity to combine business with other passions, since accounting is needed by virtually every organization, according to Lansford. Many accounting firms, including Deloitte, Ernst and Young, KPMG and PwC, have expressed interest in hiring future graduates from Rice’s program, he said.

“If you want to go into business, the MAcc program provides a clear path,” Lansford said. “Your first job is likely to be with one of the ‘Big 4’ accounting firms, and surveys consistently rank those firms among the most desirable companies to work for nationwide. But by no means are you limited to working in public accounting for the long term. After two, three or four years, your public accounting experience makes you extremely sought-after in the business world. You can do almost anything you want in business.”

Paid internship opportunities the summer before beginning the MAcc program are available for incoming students. While most MAcc students will enter the program immediately upon completing their bachelor’s degrees, the program is also open to students with work experience.

More information, including application requirements, is available at https://business.rice.edu/macc.