The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board announced Thursday that 369 accounting and auditing students will receive $10,000 in scholarships as part of its PCAOB Scholars program.
Mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, this initiative is funded through monetary penalties collected as part of PCAOB enforcement actions. The PCAOB Scholars Program aims to support students who wish to pursue a career in auditing and raise awareness about opportunities in accounting.
Eligible students were nominated by their institution for demonstrating both an excellent academic record and financial need. According to PCAOB board member Tony Thompson, the program’s goal was to help families who didn’t have the means to support their children’s professional goals, as well as grow the talent pipeline.
“In the accounting profession, like many other financial fields, the statistics don’t bear out that you have a lot of people of color coming into the pipeline,” said Thompson. “We are following the same storyline as STEM programs, and that effort is permeated through reaching out to elementary school, middle school and high school students, who are not really exposed to the curricula until too much later in college, especially in underserved communities.”
PCAOB scholarships are one-time awards that cover educational expenses such as tuition, attendance fees, books and supplies. Between 2011 and 2023, the PCAOB offered more than $22.42 million in scholarships to 2,242 students in U.S. colleges and universities, with a specific focus on underserved communities.
Its 2023 cohort reaffirmed the program’s commitment to diversity and inclusion with a series of key numbers:
- Five historically Black colleges and universities participated in the PCAOB Scholars program, up from three in 2022;
- 56% of PCAOB Scholars self-identify as non-white, making 2023 the second consecutive year that over half of the recipients are from underrepresented backgrounds;
- 57% of scholars received Pell grants, the highest level ever and up from 29% in 2017;
- 67% of PCAOB Scholars live in households with incomes under $75,000;
- 65% of PCAOB Scholars are women;
- 32% of PCAOB Scholars are first-generation students, up from 26% in 2017;
- 74 PCAOB Scholars transferred into their four-year institution from community colleges, the most ever.
Thompson said that regardless of the PCAOB’s standard-setting agenda, it’s critical for board members to find the time to support historically Black colleges and universities, which tend to be neglected by certain companies. He visited Morgan State University in Maryland to raise awareness about accounting careers and debunk the common myth that auditing consists of juggling dull numbers in a backroom. Thompson considers it to be an exciting field “with a lot of opportunities to grow as a person and a professional.”
Courtesy of PCAOB
Aside from campus presentations, the PCAOB welcomes students every two months to visit its headquarters and learn about the board’s mission as it relates to the capital market system. As a result, small groups of 30-40 college students, including PCAOB Scholars, get the chance to talk with board members and hear what brought them to the auditing profession.
Latavia Bails, an accounting student at Morgan State University, was one of the students selected for the program. She said that joining corporate life as an African American woman has always been one of her life’s ambitions because of her community’s lack of visibility, and she recently accomplished her goal to join one of the Big Four firms as a tax consultant intern. As a result, Bails said that getting this scholarship was “a blessing.”
“I researched PCAOB and applied for this fantastic chance,” she added. “This honor brought on tears. I read my award email with a lot of emotion because I was chosen out of all the nominees. This award considerably aided me in a variety of ways, bringing me closer to both my financial strategy and my ambitions. I’d like to express my sincere gratitude for this opportunity once more.”
As the talent pool continues shrinking, Thompson said it’s more important than ever to address the access barriers to accounting careers, such as college tuition or the 150-hour requirement for the CPA license. To increase the board’s outreach and continue its work of diversifying the pipeline, the PCAOB partnered with the White House-led Student Freedom Initiative, which aims to increase the social and economic mobility of students attending minority-serving institutions for its HBCU Week last fall.
“I want to share our focus and commitment as we expanded this program, and it has been quite contagious,” said Thompson. “When we talk among ourselves, everybody wants to get on board and do what they can to push this forward. There is a lot of due diligence, communication and making sure we have every opportunity to spread the word because we feel like we have a fundamental obligation as an organization.”
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