The 150-hour rule always irked accounting professor Boz Bostrom. The 40-plus-year-old rule requires aspiring CPAs to earn 150 hours of college credit—or 30 hours on top of the 120 needed for a bachelor’s degree—to be eligible for licensure. Getting additional education, Bostrom told CFO Brew, could cost a student tens of thousands of dollars “as opposed to working that year and making $75,000,” he said. “That’s a $100,000 cost.”
But as the accounting pipeline issues worsened, Bostrom, who’s chair of the board of the Minnesota Society of CPAs (MNCPA), and his fellow members decided to promote legislation that would open up new pathways to CPA licensure.
Though MNCPA’s initial attempts to change the 150-hour rule met with resistance, it started what would become a nationwide movement. As of April 2025, seven states have passed some form of legislation undoing or supplementing the 150-hour requirement, and dozens more are discussing such laws or have them in the works.
How and why has the tide turned against the 150-hour rule so quickly?
It’s a tale of multiple factors converging: the accountant shortage, a decline in accounting majors, and new research that cast doubt on the efficacy of the rule. But it’s also a story of a (very polite, very orderly) power struggle between the profession’s national associations and its state societies.
New evidence and a crisis shift the landscape: After the pandemic, the tide started to shift as state CPA society surveys showed that members weren’t in favor of the 150-hour rule.
At the same time, academic research appeared showing that the 150-hour rule reduced entry into the profession, particularly for students from minority backgrounds, and that it didn’t increase CPA quality.
“I still have not seen, to this day, any research that has shown it’s had value,” Bostrom said.
Leaders at state societies thought that providing alternatives to the 150-hour rule could help alleviate the accounting shortage.
Mom and Dad are fighting: Minnesota’s state society was the first to vote to advance legislation to create new pathways to licensure, in 2022. The AICPA and NASBA were opposed to the effort, and spoke to MNCPA asking them to reconsider. They were concerned, Bostrom said, that eliminating the 150-hour requirement would lower standards and that it would affect mobility, or the ability of CPAs to practice across state lines. Minnesota acknowledged those concerns, but still felt change was needed.
Minnesota went ahead with its legislation, as did other states. Ohio was the first state to pass its bill, in January 2025. The new requirements for licensure vary from state to state, and some, like Utah’s, don’t specify any number of college credit hours that are needed. Ohio’s bill, for instance, allows people to apply for CPA licensure with a bachelor’s degree plus two years’ work experience, or a master’s degree plus one year of experience.
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The CPA licensure bills, by and large, are enjoying broad bipartisan support. Politicians on both sides of the aisle understand the seriousness of the accounting shortage, according to Susan Speirs, CEO of the Utah Association of CPAs.
Minnesota’s bill was written by a Republican state senator and cosigned by three Democrats. This February, Virginia’s bill passed its state legislature unanimously, as did Utah’s in March. Bostrom believes the bills are seeing support because they’re “grounded in the research and grounded in data.”
The AICPA and NASBA have also softened their stance on the 150-hour rule in response to the new legislation.
“These state-led efforts highlighted the need for a comprehensive, unified approach to licensure reform,” Marta Zaniewski, the AICPA’s VP for state legislation and state society relations, told CFO Brew in an email. The organizations have proposed changes to the Uniform Accountancy Act that would allow for an additional pathway to licensure consisting of a bachelor’s degree, a two-year work requirement, and attestation of a candidate’s competencies by an existing CPA.
Speirs finds the associations’ changed outlook refreshing. She describes their attitude as “We need to get this done. Let’s move forward.”
“And that was so pleasant to hear,” she said. “It was energizing.”
Mobility is still a concern: Though the 150-hour rule looks to soon be a thing of the past, concerns remain, especially regarding CPA mobility. When the entire country was under the same licensure standard, CPAs didn’t have to worry that being licensed in a different way would make them unable to practice in certain states.
The journey to nationwide mobility under the new rules might be a “bumpy” one, Bostrom said, but he believes the profession can’t afford to wait to address the accounting shortage.
And some solutions have been proposed: Some states have written automatic mobility provisions into their legislation. The AICPA and NASBA, on the other hand, argue for an “individual-based mobility model” in their proposal, Zaniewski said. They encourage states to adopt this model, she said, but acknowledge that the model would place “greater responsibility on individual CPAs to ensure they meet the licensure requirements of each state in which they practice.”
Challenges remain, but Speirs is hopeful. “Modernizing how we license our CPAs is essential.” she said. “It’s imperative, it’s integral, that we stay on top of this…There’s a lot of talent out there that we’re going to miss if we don’t.”