Maryland Said Yes. Here Is What That Means for You.

A little while back, I wrote a post on this site arguing that the accounting profession needed an alternative pathway to CPA licensure. The 150-credit requirement, I said, was functioning as a barrier that was keeping otherwise capable and motivated students out of the profession. Not because they weren't smart enough or committed enough, but because the math of time and money simply didn't work for everyone.

Maryland just passed a law making that alternative pathway a reality.

I want to take a moment to talk about what this actually means, because I think a lot of students are going to hear the headline and not fully understand the details. And the details matter here.

What Changed, and What Didn't

The traditional pathway to CPA licensure in most states, including Maryland up until now, required 150 college credit hours, passage of the CPA exam, and one year of supervised work experience under a licensed CPA. That's the path I took. It's the path most practicing CPAs you know took.

The new pathway in Maryland allows candidates to pursue licensure with 120 credit hours and two years of supervised work experience. The exam requirement doesn't change. You still have to pass one of the hardest professional licensing exams that exists.

The tradeoff is straightforward: 30 fewer credits in exchange for one additional year of work experience before you can call yourself licensed. For most people entering this profession, that is not really a tradeoff at all. More on that in a moment.

One thing worth clarifying upfront: in Maryland and many other states, you could already sit for the CPA exam at 120 credit hours. You just couldn't get licensed until you had 150. That distinction confused students for years, and it created a strange kind of limbo where someone could pass the hardest sections of the exam and still be years away from licensure depending on how they structured their education.

What Those 30 Credits Actually Cost People

Let me give you some context from inside a classroom.

I teach at a school that doesn't have a traditional business school. Students here don't always come in knowing they want to be accountants on day one. That matters more than it sounds.

Think about it this way. An engineering student starts as a freshman knowing exactly what they need. They map out 18 credits a semester, maybe a winter or summer class, and they graduate on time with everything their major requires. They planned for it from the beginning.

Accounting doesn't always work that way, especially at schools like mine. A student might come in undecided, or as a finance major, or as something else entirely, and discover accounting junior year. By that point, they can absolutely take every required accounting course before they graduate. What they probably cannot do is hit 150 credit hours without staying an extra year or going back to school after graduation.

That extra year meant one of two things in practice: a master's degree, or a collection of additional credits that had nothing to do with accounting. And I want to be direct about that second option, because it was genuinely frustrating to watch. Students were being told to spend money and time on coursework that had no bearing on their ability to practice accounting, just to check a numerical box. For a student already carrying debt, already tired, already watching friends in other fields start earning real money, that ask was sometimes the thing that ended the conversation entirely.

The version of this that bothered me most wasn't dramatic. It was quiet. A student who liked accounting, was good at it, and had a realistic shot at a solid career in public accounting, comparing their options against investment banking or corporate finance and realizing that those paths didn't require an extra year of school. So they went that direction, not because they were more passionate about it, but because the barrier wasn't there. I understood why they made that call. I just didn't love that I was the one telling them it made sense.

How I Got Here, and Why My Path Isn't the Only One

I got a master's degree, and I don't regret it. For me, the degree opened the door to teaching, which is something I genuinely love. It also helped me get recruited into opportunities I might not have accessed through my undergraduate program alone. I've written more about that calculation elsewhere on this site, but the short version is that the master's degree made sense for my specific goals and situation.

I also know people who picked up their extra 30 credits through community college courses and online programs. I know people who stretched out their undergraduate career by a semester or two. And I know people who pursued a master's primarily because firms were using CPA eligibility as a filter in recruiting, and they felt like they had no other choice if they wanted to be considered.

That last point is something students don't always understand until it's already happened to them. When I was being recruited, firms structured their entire pipeline around graduation timelines tied to the 150-credit requirement. I had two friends who were my academic equals in every accounting class we shared. They both got interviews at a firm that never called me back, because they were on track to graduate with 150 credits a year before I was. Same grades. Same courses. Different outcomes, because of a number.

That experience stuck with me, and it's part of why I was cheering for this kind of change years before it happened.

The Work Experience Question

Some students will look at the new pathway and immediately focus on the extra year of required work experience as the catch. I want to address that directly: for most people, it isn't one.

I passed the CPA exam before I started graduate school. By the time I actually applied for licensure, I had been working for more than two years. That's a pretty common pattern, because the exam takes time to finish, especially if you're working while you study. Many candidates already have a year or more of experience before they clear all four sections.

For the rare person who finishes the exam quickly and is eager to get licensed as fast as possible: think carefully about what you'd actually be licensed to do at that stage. Signing off on audits. Attesting to financial statements. Taking professional responsibility for complex tax work. With one year of experience, the work that requires that credential is mostly still ahead of you. That second year isn't keeping you from anything you're quite ready for yet.

The experience requirement exists because it should. Trading 30 credits of coursework, some of which had nothing to do with accounting, for an additional year of real work experience is a reasonable exchange. Most students pursuing this path are going to accumulate those two years without thinking twice about it.

Why I Think This Is Good for the Profession

There are people in the accounting world who are skeptical of this change. The concern is that loosening the educational requirement risks something about the quality of the credential. I understand where that comes from, but I don't think it holds up.

The CPA exam doesn't change. It's comprehensive, it's difficult, and it doesn't care how many credit hours you have. The work experience requirement doesn't go away, it increases. What changes is the credit hour count, a significant portion of which, under the old system, students were filling with courses that had nothing to do with accounting.

The profession has been losing students for years. Enrollment in accounting programs has declined. The candidate pipeline has been shrinking. Some of that is competition from other fields. But some of it is a structural problem that was pricing people out of the credential without making them better accountants. Education costs money. More education costs more money. We cannot ask people to take a long view of their career if the short-term cost of entry is genuinely out of reach for them.

I said that in the earlier post. I still believe it.

What This Means If You're Sitting in My Class Right Now

This change expands a conversation I've been wanting to have for years.

For a long time, when a student who was on track to graduate at 120 credits came to me weighing accounting against investment banking, or corporate finance, or any number of other paths that didn't require extra school, I had to be honest with them. If they weren't already planning on graduate school or an extra year of credits, public accounting and CPA licensure was going to require a detour they hadn't budgeted for. I wasn't going to tell someone to blow up their graduation plan for a license they'd have to wait years to use anyway. That calculus is different now.

If you're a student who has your core accounting coursework covered and you're on track to graduate at 120 credits, the CPA pathway is now a real option for you in a way it wasn't before. Not just technically available, but actually accessible without rerouting your life.

What I'd encourage you to do is treat this the same way you'd evaluate any career decision: compare the paths honestly. Look at where a CPA with public accounting experience ends up five years out, ten years out. Look at the optionality it creates, the ability to work in tax, audit, advisory, industry, or teaching. Look at what the license actually opens up over a career, not just in year one. Then look at the alternatives you're considering and make a real comparison.

For a lot of you, that comparison is going to land differently now that one of the biggest obstacles has been removed. That's why this matters.

Have questions about CPA exam timing, the 120-credit pathway, or how to think through your options? Drop a comment or reach out directly. If this was helpful, pass it along to someone who's still working through the decision.