Manuj Mittal
As the accounting profession confronts a shrinking talent pipeline and accelerating AI adoption, one educator argues the solution begins long before a graduate's first day on the job.
America has roughly 340,000 fewer accountants and auditors than it did in 2019, according to a Bloomberg analysis of federal employment data. More than 720 U.S. companies had cited insufficient staffing in accounting and other functions as a potential source of reporting errors, according to a Hudson Labs analysis reported by Bloomberg.
The pipeline isn't replacing them. First-time CPA exam candidates fell 33 percent between 2016 and 2021, according to the AICPA's Trends Report, and in a 2024 survey of financial leaders, 83 percent said they could not find qualified accounting talent, up from 70 percent two years earlier.
Shrinking talent is only half the challenge. AI is simultaneously reshaping what accountants actually do.
Few educators have experienced both shifts as closely as Manuj Mittal. Before entering higher education, Mittal worked across audit, advisory and finance, including experience at Grant Thornton and on the investment side at Morgan Stanley, giving him firsthand insight into what employers expect from new hires. He pursued Chartered Accountancy in India, a professional accounting qualification broadly comparable to the U.S. CPA pathway, and later earned an MBA and a Master of Science in Finance from the University of Rochester's Simon Business School.
Most recently, Mittal served as assistant director and career consultant in Simon's Benet Career Management Center, working directly with graduate finance and accounting students entering one of business's fastest-changing professions while also shaping the curriculum that prepares them. He helped co-instruct Career Strategy and Professional Readiness, a 14-week graduate course built to give students real-world employer experience before they enter the hiring process.
Some of the routine tasks that historically served as early-career training grounds are increasingly being automated. Reconciliations, journal entry testing, audit sampling, and first-pass tax preparation were never glamorous, but they taught new hires how the numbers fit together.
Software increasingly handles that work. As routine tasks become automated, employers increasingly value judgment, communication, and adaptability over technical execution alone.
As automation expands, employers are placing greater emphasis on capabilities such as professional scepticism, communication, client judgement and interpreting unusual or ambiguous information. They increasingly expect graduates to work alongside AI rather than simply perform the routine tasks AI now completes.
That leaves the accounting industry with a strange math problem. It needs more people at exactly the moment it needs different people.
Mittal's answer is to change what happens before graduation. He argues that experiential learning belongs inside the curriculum itself: employer projects, integrated internships, and simulations that mirror real workplace decisions. Imagine student teams managing a simulated quarterly close for an employer partner. Assignments like that turn coursework into evidence employers can evaluate. Judgment and communication develop fastest when students practice them in real settings.
His doctoral research at Rochester's Warner School of Education examines how universities can redesign graduate education to align academic preparation with a rapidly changing profession.
The focus is institutional redesign rather than individual advising: changing programs, not simply guiding students through them.
The implications extend beyond the classroom. When accounting teams operate understaffed, financial close timelines can lengthen and the risk of reporting errors increases. Recent disclosure data suggests those pressures are already surfacing inside finance departments. A pipeline that produces fewer accountants, trained for tasks that no longer exist, compounds the problem from both ends.
Some educators argue universities should prioritize broad intellectual development over workforce preparation. Mittal believes both are essential.
The pipeline has begun to show signs of recovery. U.S. undergraduate accounting enrollment rose 7.3% year over year in fall 2025, marking a third consecutive year of growth, according to National Student Clearinghouse data cited by the AICPA and Jan Taylor, the organization’s academic-in-residence, said the numbers suggest the profession's recruiting initiatives “are starting to have an effect.”
Increasing enrollment may help solve the profession’s quantity problem. Recent changes to CPA licensure could help bring more people into the field. In 2025, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy approved an additional pathway that allows candidates to pursue CPA licensure with a bachelor’s degree, two years of professional experience and passage of the CPA Exam. The new pathway offers an alternative to the traditional 150-hour requirement and could remove a significant hurdle for prospective accountants.
Getting more people into accounting, however, is only part of the challenge. Mittal believes higher education must also address whether graduates leave school with the skills employers actually need.
The next generation of accountants is already sitting in today’s classrooms. Whether they’re ready for the profession they’ll inherit depends on what universities teach before graduation. Training more accountants matters. Preparing them for a profession being reshaped by AI may matter even more. Mittal believes upskilling younger generations can help empower communities and build a better, more sustainable future.