The accounting pipeline is not a problem any single club can solve. Developing your own finance team is.

Somewhere in your club today, someone is processing accounts payable. Picture that person, then answer one question honestly. Do they see a career ahead of them, or a job?

Your answer will matter more over the next decade than any recruiting strategy you build this year, because the profession that person entered is not producing enough people to replace them.

The Shortage Is Real, and More Nuanced Than the Headlines

In the 2023 to 2024 academic year, U.S. colleges awarded 55,152 bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting, down 6.6 percent, the third straight annual decline after drops of 9.6 percent and 7.4 percent. Reuters reports the U.S. accounting workforce shrank roughly 10 percent between 2019 and 2024, and that about half of AICPA members are over 50.

Enrollment has since turned around. Four-year undergraduate accounting enrollment rose 8.9 percent this spring, following increases of 12.7 percent and 4.8 percent in the two prior years. That is genuinely good news, and it does not help you now. Today you are competing for graduates produced during the decline, and a freshman who declares accounting this fall does not become your Assistant Controller candidate for the better part of a decade.

Why They Walked Away

This is the useful part, because almost every reason students chose something else is a reason an employer can influence.

The National Pipeline Advisory Group found that 85 percent of students said raising starting salaries would grow the pipeline, and the numbers back them up. Using National Association of Colleges and Employers data, 2022 accounting graduates averaged $60,698, against $66,650 in finance, $71,208 in management information systems and $86,964 in computer and information sciences. Between 2017 and 2022, accounting starting salaries rose 16 percent while inflation rose roughly 20 percent. Students were not confused about accounting. They compared the education, hours, and pay with other business careers and decided the trade was not worth pursuing.

Workload and flexibility mattered nearly as much: 77 percent of students wanted more flexibility in hours and location, and 72 percent pointed to more manageable workloads. Then there is the finding every club should sit with. Seventy percent of Gen Z employees say they would leave for an employer offering the same salary and the same job description but better technology. If your finance office still runs on manual re-keying and workarounds for a system nobody wants to replace, technology is no longer an efficiency question. It is a talent question.

What a Club Can Offer That a Large Firm Cannot

You will not out-bid a national firm on starting salary, and most clubs cannot offer three remote days a week. So compete where you can win. A young accountant in a club is a few doors from the CFO, the General Manager, the department heads, and the actual operating decisions. Within a few years they can touch budgeting and forecasting, cash flow, capital planning, payroll, inventory, membership accounting, audit preparation and Finance Committee reporting, and learn to explain all of it to people who do not speak finance.

That breadth is a real advantage, and it is entirely conditional. It exists only if the Head of Finance deliberately opens those doors. Otherwise, the young accountant sees accounts payable and month-end close forever and concludes that clubs are a treadmill.

How One Club Did It

Paula Jean Hunt, CFO at The Club at Admiral’s Cove, has spent her tenure proving what this looks like.

Her Controller finished his accounting degree under her watch and is now pursuing a master’s and CPA licensure. Her Senior Staff Accountant was flipping burgers at a fast food restaurant when she found him. He started out filing, asked a lot of questions, and she taught him accounts payable and bank requisitions while he enrolled full-time in an accounting program. Another team member was stewarding in the kitchen; Paula cleared it with the Chef to bring him into accounting part-time so he could work and learn at once. He became an Accounts Payable Coordinator, earned a scholarship, and is graduating with an accounting degree. She took a hostess and server out of Food and Beverage and taught her accounts receivable. That employee is in school at night.

None of it was free. The Club invested in people who showed potential, with tuition funded through The Admiral’s Cove Scholarship Foundation on the CFO’s recommendation, plus industry conferences. The rest was what Paula calls sweat equity: after hours, one-on-one, a CFO teaching accounting to people who did not have it yet. Her team is active in CMAA and HFTP and helped build the Young Professionals group. That is discretionary effort. It is in nobody’s job description. It is the entire difference between employing accountants and developing them.

The profession now agrees. In 2025, the AICPA and NASBA added a licensure pathway of a 120-hour bachelor’s degree, two years of professional experience, and passage of the CPA Exam, replacing the traditional 150 credit hours. Structured experience counts. The question is whether you are providing any.

Development Does Not Stop at the Property Line

Tessa Leverett, Controller at Desert Highlands Association, serves on the Global Board of HFTP and spearheads its Young Professionals Council. Her point is one every Head of Finance should hear: young professionals must be proactive about their own learning, and they need it from outside the club as well as inside, by connecting with peers at other clubs. That takes your permission and your budget. Send them to the chapter meeting. Pay the membership. Put them on a committee. Let them be gone for two days in a busy month. The instinct to keep a talented young accountant chained to your close calendar is the instinct that eventually costs you that accountant.

Career, or Job

Ask yourself some hard questions. Do you know what your AP specialist wants to do next? Does your Staff Accountant know what it takes to become Assistant Controller? Is your Controller being taught to present to a Finance Committee, or only to prepare the package someone else presents? Do you teach and delegate, or keep the higher-level work because it’s faster to do it yourself? Are you paying for CPA or CMA education?

Posting another accounting vacancy is no longer a talent strategy. Clubs that understand this will stop competing for the same shrinking pool of experienced hires and start growing their own, one steward, one hostess, and one filing clerk at a time.

Go back to the person you pictured at the beginning. Can they see a career ahead of them, or just a job? You are the one who decides.

HFTP Clubs Online – August 2026

Michelle A. Riklan, ACRW, CPRW, CEIC, CJSS is a Career Strategist, Search & Consulting Executive at KOPPLIN KUEBLER & WALLACE (KK&W). KK&W is the leading executive search and consulting firm in the private club industry. Michelle can be reached at 833-KKW-HIRE (559-4473) ext. 717 and at michelle@kkandw.com.