The Kate Tiedemann College of Business is encouraging more students to enroll in the university’s accountancy program.
Faculty members such as accountancy assistant professor Debra Sinclair said that there is a workforce shortage of accounting graduates in Florida.
“One of the main reasons is that not many accounting graduates find and get jobs,” she said.
Lack of experience often prevents recent graduates from getting hired. There is often a gap between the skills accountancy majors have upon graduation and what employers expect from them. Employers often look to hire people with at least two years of experience.
“We have students who are graduating, but have no experience,” said Alison Watkins, a professor of information systems management.
Accounting is one of the campus’ most popular undergraduate majors. The Kate Tiedemann college of business currently has an estimated 1,200 students and just under 300 are accounting majors.
The College of Business has been developing its programs to find ways to increase the enrollment rate, and provide more opportunities to get internships and experience.
Along with USF Tampa and the University of Central Florida, USF St. Petersburg was awarded with the TEAm (Targeted Educational Attainment) grant by the state last March.
The TEAm grant was created by the Florida Board of Governors to increase undergraduate enrollment in accounting, create more internship opportunities for students, and get graduates full-time jobs in the business field.
Another strategy is getting accounting majors to take the MIS (Management Information System) program. The courses intersect business skills with information technology systems, so graduates can enter into local corporations with the knowledge to use the technology programs in their jobs.
“There is a rise in need for technical graduates in data analytics to manage information technologies for large businesses,” Watkins said.
She hopes that students in other majors can look into information technology.
“There has been a growth … for these skills,” she said. “We all will be working with technology sooner or later.”
The university is also looking for other ways to get students interested in information systems.
Training boot camps are sessions for high school students to look into the IS programs in Florida’s universities. The next boot camps will take place during the summer and fall semesters. Events such as Innovation Night and Tampa Bay Technology Forum: Student Chapter are helping students to actively think about solving real-world business problems.
