I hire accounting professionals regularly. A CPA is much more valuable than an MBA. I actually value an MBA very weakly. That being said the reason CPAs command more is because it is so difficult.
I know many people while working in the field were unable to pass the exam after several years of trying.
Using NH as an example, it looks like more hours are required? (I thought at one point they were talking about requiring work experience in public so it’s interesting it’s still class hours only.)
“If you apply to take the examination after July 1, 2014, you must have each of the following:
1.A conferred bachelor’s degree from a recognized university or college that is accredited;
The Board does not accept a three-year bachelor’s degree in combination with professional qualification as equivalent to a U.S. bachelor’s degree.
The Board will accept the combination of a three-year bachelor’s degree and two-year master’s degree.
2.A minimum of 120 credit hours either within the bachelor’s degree or earned outside the bachelor’s from a recognized university or college that is accredited.
3.A minimum of 30 semester hours in accounting which must include a course in each of the following: financial accounting, auditing, taxation and management accounting.
4.A minimum of 24 semester hours in business electives, other than accounting, which may include but is not limited to, business law, business information systems, finance, professional ethics, business organizations, and economics.”
Where did you hear that?
What you ae showing me is here is that NH requires less than the150 hours we have been talking about. But this standard changed in 2014, now the requirements are 150 hours, same as we have been talking about upthread. You need no work experience to take the exam. You do need work experience to get the license, but it does not seem like that would be an issue in the OP’s situation considering he or she is already working in accounting - but the OP should check the state requirements just to be sure.
From your cite:
New Licensing Eligibility Requirements – Effective July 1, 2014:
If you complete any of the licensure eligibility requirements (including the examination and experience requirements) after July 1, 2014, regardless of when you first applied for the examination, you must have each of the following:
A conferred bachelor’s degree from a recognized university or college that is accredited;
The Board does not accept a three-year bachelor’s degree in combination with professional qualification as equivalent to a U.S. bachelor’s degree.
The Board will accept the combination of a three-year bachelor’s degree and two-year master’s degree.
A minimum of 150 credit hours either within the bachelor’s degree or earned outside the bachelor’s from a recognized university or college that is accredited.
A minimum of 30 semester hours in accounting which must include a course in each of the following: financial accounting, auditing, taxation and management accounting.
A minimum of 24 semester hours in business electives, other than accounting, which may include but is not limited to, business law, business information systems, finance, professional ethics, business organizations, and economics.
I think my lsat post might have been a little unclear, and I missed the edit window. Basically it is easier in NH to sit for the exam - you only need to have 120 hours. To get the license you need the same 150 hours we have been taking about already.
In NH it is easier to get the license also, you need no work experience from what I can tell, but most states require work experience to get the license, the OP should check his or her state requirements.
My son got his BS in Accounting. He then started working on his MBA as he needed something like 150 credit hours to become a CPA. After passing the CPA exams, he finished his MBA.
He’s making 6 figures now and is only 33 YO.
Business about CPA/MBA aside, the question comes down to what would you want to do at some other company?
The MBA really is a jack-of-all-trades degree; you get a fairly good grounding in the business process and how the various parts of a business interact, as well as a pretty solid idea of how companies interact with each other and the market. You do NOT get a particularly deep dive in any one aspect, even with a concentration in that.
An accounting degree or CPA license is essentially making sure you’ll be an accountant or do accounting at your next job.
If you want to do accounting/be an accountant, then go that route. If not, then go MBA.
Not necessarily. I know many CPA’s (myself included) that have taken on many other roles besides accounting. (i.e. corporate finance, treasury, mergers & acquisitions, business development, risk management, etc.). I obtained my CPA certification 25 years ago, and haven’t had an accounting job for the last 15.
Yeah, but it’s not the normal route; the vast, vast majority of CPAs end up doing accounting, or financial stuff, which is closely related. Even your list is that way, with the exception of business development, which is unusual for CPAs… about as unlikely as an IT guy doing the same.
What is his work schedule like, if you don’t mind me asking. I’m finding that jobs that offer a reasonable work life balance are significantly more difficult to get than ones that pay more - but much of that is anecdotal information.
MBAs are weird. The part time MBA experience is significantly different from the full time MBA experience, and a MBA from a top 10 school != a top 40-50 school != various tiers below that. The most important thing is to figure out before you’re going in what your goal is - a part time MBA isn’t “worse” if your company is paying for it and it gets you a promotion at the end of the line, but it’s different than a full time MBA where in the top 10 range it’s people coming out of a few years at Goldman or McKinsey, and in the top 40-50 it’s high achievers looking for a career touchstone or pivot, and so on and so forth. Hiring companies are pretty familiar with this; a MBA from a fourth-tier school will tick the requirement box but not much more, whereas someone coming out of Harvard with zero post-MBA experience is going for a completely different tier of job. A lot of it is also the alumni network: if you’re planning on staying in a region, a program that doesn’t have a ton of clout nationally can be an amazing value if it’s influential enough locally. A lot like law school, in that respect.
A CPA is more valuable than an MBA if you want to go into one of the (relatively more specific) types of work where a CPA is truly the distinguishing credential. As others have mentioned, this is not exclusively accounting, but it’s weighted in that direction. One interesting thing to note is that a lot of CFOs come down the CPA path, even though (IMO) the skills you learn as a MBA are much more applicable there, especially if you’re focusing on corporate finance (as opposed to investment finance).
41 credit hours is a year and a half, 69 is closer to two and a half, and those are with near full time course loads. If you’re going to spend three years, why not be super ambitious and do a MBA/MSA? 
(FWIW, I don’t think a BS in accounting alone is any boost at all over a BA in something else plus accounting experience. If you’re going to put your time/effort into this, never mind money, get a “M”.)
I’d really say that it’s probably more like Top 15 or so have a vastly different experience from the 16-50th, who have it different than everybody else with an MBA.
I mean, if you graduate from Wharton or Harvard, big companies actively recruit you as a sort of executive-in-training, and consulting companies like McKinsey, Bain, etc… are excited about you.
Graduate from a 16-50th, and it’s a good gold star on the resume, but you’re not usually being actively recruited for bigger and better things- it’s more a prerequisite for working your way into an executive position via management positions. Consulting companies are less excited- you end up at the next tier or two down in consulting companies (the Accentures, the E&Ys, etc…)
Less than 50th, and it’s more of a tick in a box; nobody’s terrifically impressed that you got your MBA from Podunk Baptist College or from BigStateU-Hicktown.
I’d also say that everything shifts down a rank if it’s part-time (nights) or Executive MBA (compressed night/weekend program).
So saith the guy whose MBA program was somewhere in the 40s when he graduated, and is now in the low 30s.
Anecdotal but I have hired two positions in the last year that paid over 100K with pretty solid work life balance. no weekends, 40-45 hours/week, work from home occasionally. I was looking for someone with 3-6 years experience, CPA required.
I agree with **bump **and Kiros. Particularly with regards to management consulting. If you look at a site like http://poetsandquants.com/, http://managementconsulted.com or even vault.com, the people who post there have a huge hard-on for top tier schools and the “MBB” firms (McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group) or top-tier investment banking jobs. It kinds of gives the mistaken impression that if you don’t go to Harvard or Wharton and follow a very specific career path, you’ll end up living under the highway overpass.
I mean keep in mind that for a lot of these people, unless they ultimately end up as a CEO, partner at a MBB firm or manager of a hedge fund, they will feel like they are living under the highway.
The reality is that there are a lot of high paying jobs in consulting and tech and finance and not all of them are filled by top 10 MBA grads.
I also caution against getting too caught up in the type of degree you get. Although MBA is preferable to BS in Accounting as it’s a masters program vs bachelors. MBA is also a lot broader in terms of curriculum. And if the MBA is less credits, then it’s not even a contest.
Thanks everyone for your advice. You’ve given me a lot to consider!
Be wary of the business school “Kool-Aid” though. Even if you’re personally not super-competitive, and you don’t want to be a consultant, investment banker or executive, there’s a surprisingly strong competitive undercurrent that essentially implies that if you’re not some sort of consultant, management/executive trainee or entrepreneur, that you’re some kind of loser. (which isn’t the case, but that’s the implication)
I did my stretch as a consultant and hated it with a fiery passion. I guess I’m too protective of my own time and when/how I choose to spend it; the whole idea that I got serious push-back when I refused to hop on a plane that day because I was taking my fiance’ out for her 30th birthday was what finally did it for me, along with several “Be in City X tomorrow morning”, and then not being able to come back home until 2-3 weeks full of 12-14 hour work days later. It’s not like I was in the military or some important job- we were almost always doing something decidedly non-Earth shattering.