Methodology and Sourcing

We currently list 569 programs at 276 schools (112 of them formal accounting majors or concentrations inside broader degrees), and record 169 related offerings we checked and did not list — minors, degrees with only an accounting course or two and similar — on each school page with the reason. Coverage is partial and growing: a program missing from the directory has not been verified yet. We do not claim complete coverage of US accounting education.

Which schools are eligible

A school is listed when it holds a current institutional accreditation from an accreditor recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, checked in its Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs (DAPIP), and offers at least one eligible degree. Candidate schools are discovered from federal IPEDS data (programs offered and awards conferred under accounting and taxation CIP codes at associate, bachelor's, master's and research-doctorate level), business-school and accounting accreditor lists, state and institutional catalogs, and systematic web searches. A CIP code or a third-party listing is only a lead: a school is listed after its own pages are researched and the program is shown to exist and to fit the scope.

Which programs are eligible

Concentrations keep their real degree. An MBA with an accounting concentration is shown as “MBA — Accounting Concentration”, never as a Master of Accounting. We create a separate record for a concentration only when the school awards a separately titled degree. “Accounting” and “accountancy” are alternative institutional terms for the same subject and share one subject page; the school's own title is always kept.

Minimum for publication: verified institution identity, an offering that fits the scope, an established campus or delivery arrangement, official evidence that it exists, and no sign it is discontinued. Missing optional details (tuition, admissions, deadlines, accommodation) never exclude or bury a listing; they show as “not published” or “not confirmed”, stored as unknown rather than “free”, “closed” or “No”.

Entry routes and completion programs

Who a program is built for is recorded from the program's own wording and never inferred from its title. A master's program is marked as one of: for graduates with an accounting background, a conversion program for non-accounting graduates, open to both, an accelerated bachelor's plus master's (two awards, such as 4+1), or an integrated program the institution describes as one course of study leading to both awards. Foundation and prerequisite courses are listed on the profile because they can add time and cost. At bachelor's level, first-year entry and degree-completion or transfer pathways are shown separately, and the time remaining in a completion program is not the length of the whole degree. Associate degrees are split into transfer-oriented and applied tracks by the college's own wording; an applied degree is never presented as guaranteed to transfer.

Subjects

The nine subjects are not interchangeable. A program is mapped to a subject only from official curriculum evidence — a named concentration or track, or the degree's own required core — never a topic covered in one or two courses. Forensic accounting (fraud examination and financial investigation) is a different field from forensic science and is not mixed with it. Each program also records the role accounting plays in its title: the degree title, a major, a concentration, a specialization or a track.

Format, online delivery and attendance

Offered formats (campus, online, hybrid), online delivery type, campus visits, internship, live-session schedule and study intensity are separate fields, each with its own source. “Fully online” requires explicit wording; an online application or remote elective is not an online degree; online coursework does not imply “no campus visits” or “no internship”; unknown stays unknown. Online programs sit under the school's location, which is not a residency requirement, and state-authorization limits are shown where published. We do not list an online PhD without the university itself presenting it as online.

Accreditation: institutional, business and accounting

• Institutional accreditation comes from DAPIP and is required for every school listed.
• Business accreditation (AACSB, ACBSP, IACBE) comes from each accreditor's own public list and is shown with the exact unit it covers, such as a college of business or a program.
• Accounting accreditation is a separate, supplemental record at program or unit level, again with its exact unit. It is never inferred from business accreditation, and business accreditation is never presented as accounting accreditation.

Business or accounting accreditation is not required for a program to be listed, and its absence is not treated as a sign that a program is illegitimate. Ambiguous matches go to an editor, never guessed. See the accounting accreditation guide.

CPA-related statements

CPA licensure is never a field of a degree, and we never say or imply that a degree makes someone CPA-eligible. An academic qualification, eligibility to sit the CPA Exam and a CPA license are three separate things, and the requirements for the second and third are set by each state board of accountancy and change. A program profile shows only the CPA-related statements the school itself publishes, each with its jurisdiction, any conditions, the date it takes effect and the page it came from. If a program publishes nothing, the profile says none is published; that is not the same as “not eligible”. Always confirm with your state board. See accounting degrees and CPA requirements and CPA exam eligibility vs licensure.

Certificates

Accounting certificates (undergraduate, post-baccalaureate and graduate) are listed on their own page as published by the school, with credits, format and entry requirements where stated. They are not degrees and are never counted in degree totals, filters, comparisons or selections.

How facts are verified

Every sourced fact carries the official page it came from, a verbatim quote and the date it was checked. A script re-fetches the page and looks for the quote; a fact whose quote is not found is never published, and sources that cannot be reached (bot walls are not circumvented) are marked as unverified. Older catalog PDFs alone do not establish current availability. Tuition keeps its basis (per credit, term, year or whole program), student category and year; totals are calculated only when supported and with the assumptions visible. Outcomes, salaries and licensure statements appear only when sourced and dated, and an academic degree is never presented as qualifying someone for a job, an exam or a license.

Research coverage

We track a research matrix — subject × degree level × state — recording the discovery searches run, the candidate institutions, the verified programs, the places where no verified offering was found and the remaining gaps. The matrix is summarized in the coverage report; empty cells are never filled in to look complete, and we do not generate empty pages for cities without eligible institutions.

Best-college selections and ranking

We do not publish numerical rankings or scores. The Best Colleges pages are unranked editorial selections: each states its criteria, the data used, its limitations and a review date, lists qualifying schools or programs alphabetically, and is independent of sponsorship. Criteria measure how completely a program publishes checkable information, not teaching quality or outcomes. A selection with too few qualifying entries is not published as a list. Sponsored placements are labelled, sit in their own sections and never influence a selection or the order of results.

Data sources

Identity and location come from IPEDS (NCES); institutional accreditation from DAPIP; business and accounting accreditation from the accreditors' lists; program facts from each school's own program, catalog, admissions and tuition pages. Third-party directories and rankings are used only as leads and never as sources, and databases and descriptions are not copied wholesale.

Corrections

Found an error or a missing program? Use the correction form or tell us about a program. Corrections are checked against official pages before anything changes.