Professor Elam

Weekend March 8, 2015

Very few of our accounting students take the CPA exam upon completing graduate school. Which of course means few pass. 

I attended an interesting session on group activity at the conference in Las Vegas. One administrator was studying the difference between commuter and resident students at his community college. The residential students living on campus in dorms had an average  3.1 GPA, the commuter students living off campus had   2.3, a huge difference. 

I suspect the reason is that for the commuter student, college comes in at number three, after work and home life. For the residential student, college is the job. And there is rivalry to spur one on. 

C H Smith ponders the rivalry of a cohort group in considering the Beatles. There have been many studies of the group as they stayed together from the founding in the late 1950s to the final break up in 1970. His point is that yes there was rivalry and resentment at times but that simply spurred the creative impulse to out do, out song write, the other guys. 

I suspect we will not move to another level of CPA test taking until we have a larger, more cohesive cohort group.