Bachelor of Arts
Major
Accounting is the discipline that turns what an organization does into numbers and other people can trust.
The Accounting major at Goshen College is a 56-credit undergraduate major that trains you to build those numbers, not just read them. You’ll learn the full accounting cycle, from a single transaction to a finished set of financial statements. You’ll learn cost and managerial accounting, how organizations use accounting information to budget, price, and decide. You’ll learn individual and business taxation. And you’ll learn auditing: the discipline that gives financial statements their credibility, and the reason the CPA license exists at all.
Outside of one required experience-focused course, there’s essentially one path through the degree. Every accounting employer, and every state board of accountancy, is checking for the same core competencies, and the major is built to deliver exactly those, in the right order. If you’re aiming at the CPA license, corporate finance, auditing, or a firm that will trust you with someone else’s numbers, this is the major built for that.
You don’t have to already be “a numbers person.” You have to be willing to get precise, every time, about what the numbers actually say.
Accounting is one of the few professions built entirely on being the person other people can rely on to get the numbers right and say so honestly when they don’t add up. At Goshen, that’s not assumed, it’s taught directly, alongside the technical material, as part of what it means to do the work well.
So from your first course, you’re learning the standard technical core: the cycle, the statements, the cost systems, the tax code, the audit process, and you’re also learning to ask what a set of numbers is for and who is relying on them being right. That combination is what state boards of accountancy, firms, and employers are actually screening for when they interview a candidate: someone technically sound and genuinely trustworthy with what they’re handed.
Goshen College prepared me well for a career in accounting and finance through hands-on coursework, real-life case studies, internship opportunities, and professors who genuinely cared about my success. My SST experience in Cambodia was a highlight that expanded my worldview and ignited a love for travel and experiencing new cultures. But most importantly, I developed lifelong friendships and a set of values that continue to guide me today.
Seth Grimes '11
Senior Director, Corporate Finance and Investment Banking at Eli Lilly and Company
A number that’s wrong doesn’t just look bad — it costs someone something, and it costs the person who signed off on it their credibility. That’s the standard this major holds you to from the start. Wherever you end up — a firm, a company, a nonprofit, your own practice — you’ll be the person the numbers can be trusted to.
It’s a 56-credit undergraduate major that prepares you to build, analyze, tax, and audit an organization’s financial statements — covering financial and managerial accounting, information systems, taxation, auditing, and the business and economics foundation that surrounds them. You declare it with your academic advisor, and the course catalog lists the current requirements.
You’ll be able to identify how personal values and ethics inform business decisions, and understand the roles and tools of the core business functions and how they connect. You’ll be intentionally prepared for an accounting career, able to influence and lead others toward results, and able to identify problems, analyze information, and apply real frameworks to solve them. And you’ll be able to communicate that analysis clearly and work productively with people who don’t see a situation the way you do — skills every accounting employer tests for alongside the technical ones.
Yes, that’s the path most students are on. Indiana requires 120 credit hours to sit for the CPA exam; licensing requirements — including the 150-hour threshold many states set for full licensure — vary by state, so the right plan depends on where you intend to practice. Your advisor can help you build that plan, and Goshen’s 4+1 MBA pathway (available once you’ve completed 60 credit hours with a 2.50 GPA) is a common way students reach the additional hours without losing time.
Fifty-six credit hours, sequenced deliberately: foundational business and accounting courses in the first two years, the technical core — intermediate accounting, taxation, cost accounting — building through the middle years, and auditing and the capstone in the final year. There’s essentially one choice point in the whole plan: a required experience-focused course, which you can fulfill through an internship or another applied, hands-on placement arranged with faculty.
Associate Professor of Business
Assistant Professor of Business
Professor of Accounting
Program Director
Department Chair
Assistant Professor of Business
Assistant Professor of Information Technology
Professor of Economics
Carl Kreider Chair and Co-Director of Global Engagement
Associate Professor of Business
Professor of Accounting
