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Introduction and background
There has been a considerable decline in the number of students studying accounting majors in various parts of the world over the latest decade (e.g. [6] Albrecht and Sack (2000) in the USA; [35] Marshall (2003) in the UK; [32] Jackling (2002) in Australia and [50] Wells and Fieger (2005) in New Zealand). Both the accounting professional bodies and academia have struggled with the issue as to why the accounting profession remains so unpopular, particularly among the brightest business students. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as the "best and brightest issue" ([28] Hermanson et al. , 1996; [18] Fedoryshyn and Hintz, 2000; [14] Byrne and Willis, 2005). Similar to these countries, the number of applicants for the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) examinations in Japan has also drastically reduced in recent years. Figure 1 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.] shows that such examinees declined by more than 1,000 during 2005 and the recovery rate has been much slower than one would expect.
In Japan, the Certified Public Accountants Law (the CPAs Law ) allows anyone to attempt the CPA exam without any specialist education requirements. This is in direct contrast to the accreditation process seen in many other countries (The CPAs Law , 2003, Art. 2-5). As long as students pass the CPA exams, they can practice as a CPA. They usually study at university independently or go to what are referred to as clam schools, which provide specialist tuition in exam preparation. There is only one accounting professional body in Japan and this is called the Japanese Institute of Certified Public Accountants. It is very rare for Japanese to join other international professional bodies such as the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) due to language difficulties. The quality control of the CPA candidate was initially enhanced by the small success rate displayed in the CPA exam. Accordingly, competition in the exams was generally very high. However the CPAs Law was revised in 2003. This revision empowered the renewed CPA Law to use free market competition to increase the intake of CPA candidates but this occurred at the expense of recruitment quality control. As a result, although the number of successful examinees increased, one-third of them missed vocational opportunities...