Attracting the best and brightest: An examination of the factors that influence students' intent to enter the accounting profession

A number of academic studies have focused on why students decide to choose the accounting major, but there is a scarcity of studies grounded in theory that have examined the relative importance of factors affecting accounting majors' employment choices with a focus on the best and brightest students. The purpose of this study was to learn more about the factors that influence students to enter the accounting profession and to address the apparent gap in the literature by designing a study that incorporated the use of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to provide a theoretical framework for analyzing the factors that influence undergraduate accounting majors' career choice. From that conceptual framework the study sought to identify whether a difference exists between the factors that influence the career choice of high aptitude students as compared to other accounting majors.;Using an online survey, data for this research was collected from undergraduate accounting majors from six colleges and universities of varying size and geographic locations. Due to the study's correlational design as based on Azjen's (1991) TPB, structural equation modeling (SEM) was utilized to examine the relationship of variables proposed in the conceptual model. Also, an independent samples t-test was conducted to evaluate whether a difference existed between the factors of attitude toward the profession (ATT), subjective norms (SN), and perceived behavioral controls (PBC) that influence the career intentions of high aptitude students (best and brightest) as compared to other accounting majors (non-best and brightest).;Results indicated that ATT and SN were significant indicators of accounting majors' intent to enter the accounting profession. There was no statistically significant difference in the factors of attitude, subjective nouns and perceived behavioral control that influence the intent of the best and brightest and non-best and brightest accounting majors.