"Is it even worth it?"
This is the pressing question many CPA professionals ask when they consider dedicating their career to the academe. Looking candidly at the current institutional landscape, it is becoming increasingly difficult to say "yes."
We are facing a silent crisis in Philippine accounting education. The regulatory barriers to entry for aspiring faculty are becoming insurmountable, while the structural incentives to stay are rapidly vanishing.
The Burden of Compliance
To thrive—or even achieve basic security—as a CPA in the Philippine higher education sector today, you are confronted with a mountain of regulatory mandates:
- Mandatory Master’s Degree (MBA/MSA): An absolute baseline prerequisite for academic tenure.
- Accreditation Burdens: Earning 120 CPD units for Board of Accountancy (BOA) academe accreditation—often financed entirely out-of-pocket and attended during personal leave or weekends.
- Pedagogical Training: Earning 12 to 18 units of formal professional education if the instructor does not hold an undergraduate degree in education.
- Continuous Research Demands: Journal publishing requirements heaped directly on top of grueling 24- to 30-unit teaching loads.
- Syllabus Volatility: Constantly restructuring syllabi to mirror fluctuating CHED guidelines and PRBOA Tables of Specifications (TOS).
The Part-Time Dilemma
Because of these high compliance barriers, modest entry-level remuneration, and protracted tenure timelines, most colleges and universities—particularly outside Metro Manila—rely overwhelmingly on part-time faculty.
We have largely lost the traditional generation of "senior professional professors"—full-time educators who brought decades of cumulative public practice or corporate leadership directly to the classroom. While it is inspiring to see dedicated young instructors step forward, the system lacks full-time senior mentors who can focus entirely on shaping future CPAs without the financial distraction of a demanding corporate day job.
The "Review Center" Anomaly
Interestingly, the most viable, flexible, and rewarding teaching positions for CPAs today are not located within university departments—they exist inside CPA Review Centers.
The review center sector is primarily market-regulated. It features minimal institutional bureaucracy, removes rigid degree credentialism, and offers significantly higher hourly compensation. If an educator delivers results and guides candidates past the licensure exam, they are rewarded directly. This reality begs an uncomfortable question: Why has the informal review sector become far more sustainable and rewarding than the formal university education system?
Why This Matters
The academe is the nursery of the accountancy profession. Without inspiring, well-supported educators, there can be no well-prepared future CPAs to fuel economic governance, regulatory compliance, and national commerce.
"The academe is my first love. I see myself teaching and mentoring until I grow old. But we cannot build the future of our profession on personal passion alone—we need an institutional system that genuinely supports, rewards, and retains our teachers."
To my fellow CPAs and academic leaders: Do you see a sustainable future for practitioners in the academe, or is teaching becoming an inaccessible art?
