Texas' Rationale for Requiring Face-to-Face Courses for CPA

[sanantone]

I'm not persuaded.

Thank you for your email concerning the Board’s rule on the 15 semester hours of upper level accounting required in a traditional classroom format.  It has been the Board’s position that a great deal of learning occurs during spontaneous classroom discussions.  Additionally, learning continues to occur after class has ended as students and instructors look deeper into the topics that were discussed which may even carryover into the next class meeting after the students and instructor have done further research.    The Board periodically considers the acceptability of accounting courses in a distance learning format.  While it recognizes the online format, it is the Board’s opinion that there is added value in the traditional classroom accounting courses that may not be present in distance learning courses.  Many Board members who were also university accounting instructors presented information and made valid arguments that some accounting courses were better suited to be offered in a traditional classroom format, than other courses, due to the material and learning objectives.  However, the Board did not construct the rule in such a way as to identify the courses that could be taken in a distance learning format.  This was left to each university. The research that has been done indicates that students who take all online courses don’t fare as well on the CPA exam as students in traditional classrooms.