Graduates celebrate at Oregon State University-Cascades in Bend on June 18, 2024. Tuition at the state’s largest public university will rise more than 5% for freshman next year.
Courtesy of Oregon State University
Oregon State University-Cascades will begin offering an accountancy major this fall.
The program was developed by associate professor Logan Steele, who transferred this summer from OSU in Corvallis to the Cascades campus in Bend to lead the program.
Regional and statewide accounting groups are excited that the return of the program to Central Oregon will strengthen the pipeline of new accounting professionals and help serve a growing region and need.
Steele first applied to teach accounting at OSU-Cascades in 2015. It didn’t work out — the accountancy program lost its accreditation due to the number of junior faculty teaching what Steele called strategic courses. But his career path brought him to OSU’s campus in Corvallis.
Still the Bend bug had bit him, and he never forgot Central Oregon.
“Bend, it’s just a magical place,” he said, before listing off all the reasons one could have to love living in the region.
“It’s the natural beauty and the weather and the skiing and the society and culture and the schools. There’s just so many things to love about the area,” he said.
Knowing there was an institutional appetite to offer an accountancy degree at the Cascades campus, he started the long and bureaucratic process to bring it back. It took about two years and “a lot of levels of approval,” he said.
This fall, students will be able to take courses in person and online, as they work to earn a major or minor in accountancy through the College of Business.
OSU already offers an accountancy major at the Corvallis campus, where Steele taught for the past five years. He said the graduates of the program had a 98% job placement rate last year — an incredible number during a time when people fret about job stability, artificial intelligence and entry-level opportunities.
When Greg Lankston, a co-managing partner with Capstone Accounting and Tax, spoke to accountancy seniors last spring at Oregon State University in Corvallis. “Most of the students looking for jobs are sophomores or juniors because the seniors all have job offers already,” he said.
Lankston’s Bend-based company has offices throughout the Pacific Northwest and is hoping to expand farther in the West Coast market.
The accountancy program will be good for his business and for the Central Oregon region as well, he said. He’s hoping his company can help grow the program and potentially hire students.
He said the growth of programs like the accountancy major will make Bend a more attractive place not just for accounting talent but for businesses that need good accountants.
The return of the program could also be a boon to the Oregon Society of CPAs. That group’s president and CEO, Sherri McPherson, said the new program will help revive the Central Oregon chapter — a hope Steele echoed.
The Oregon Society of CPAs has almost 4,000 members and provides resources for working CPAs and helps students with mentorship and scholarship opportunities. McPherson said the organization has given almost $3 million in scholarships since about 1985.
Nationally and regionally, CPAs are in high demand. Steele cited an industry poll that found 75% of CPAs nationwide are nearing retirement.
And in Central Oregon, “there’s not a lot of them that are under 40, that are under 50,” Lankston said.
He noted Central Oregon’s growth and strong economy have made it so many CPAs won’t push off retirement longer than necessary, something Steele corroborated.
“They’ve done well, they’re not going to need to work more. They have a great retirement already, and so we will see them leaving the workforce,” Steele said.
