Should I go back to school for accounting?

some reporting, some tracking of numbers, some fancy work with Excel This is Business Analysis and I would encourage you to get a business degree, not accounting, unless you really want to be a CPA (which will require that you leave your job and the university, probably, to do your time auditing). You'd be better off, I suspect, with a business degree and a minor in computer science or information science. You can pretty much do anything with a business degree.

I want to continue working at the university for as much of my career as possible, and I'd like more responsibility and challenge. Would it be possible to talk to your superiors about this? Is it the sort of environment where they'd be like "yes, we'd love to help you succeed here, you just need to do X and Y to make that happen"? Because that would probably be the most effective way of figuring out how to stay at the university and gain more responsibility.

You can pretty much do anything with a business degree. And you can easily end up doing nothing with a business degree. A business degree is very broad and won't on its own bring you a job at this stage of your career. There are mountains of people with undergraduate and graduate business degrees. An accounting degree is more specific, and as far as I know there's a good demand for accountants, therefore in my opinion an accounting degree is potentially more capable of producing job opportunities for you than a general business degree.

accounting is kinda fun. I've known several people - me included - that have worked in accounting without any sort of accounting background. Ya just pick it up on the fly; if you're reasonably intelligent, it's not that tough. Maybe get a textbook and learn about the debits and the credits and then talk to some people in your accounting department if you know any.

I did accounting/bookeeping for 10 years, I never got any real qualifications and just kind of drifted into the work starting as an account clerk. I was never a CPA, but the work really isn't that exacting, despite what you hear. Calculations are done on calculators, in software or on spreadsheets. The main skill you really need to have is to be systematic. You don't need a great memory, as the point of accounting is to clearly record everything so it can be found again, you just need to know how to find it again, which if you have basic computer skills isn't that hard. My favorite part of the job was starting with a huge stack of unorganized documents and slowly processing them and organizing them and ending up with a nice neat report that summarized them. I don't know a lot about training for Accounting in the US, but I do know that courses are available at community and vocational colleges, and have you spoken to anyone at your college to see if staff get discount rates. Maybe you could audit a class or 2. Could you start with a 2 year degree, maybe get some training in bookkeeping. The skills are useful no matter what you do, personally I think anyone that wants to deal with businesses or management should know how the books are kept. Then if you find it is something you enjoy you can go on and get your CPA or whatever. I know it is possible to do like this in Australia as I had plans to do so at one point, but not 100% sure if it is viable in the US.

Due to koahiatamadls comments on post, I'm worried I wasn't clear. I know that qualifications, for some reason, are way more important in the US than in Australia for jobs like that and why I suggested getting some Bookkeeping qualifications seemed like a good stepping stone, to see if you were interested in the line of work. A quick Google search shows that that bookkeeping courses exist in the US (I don't know the schools to know if they are good ones or not)and you could do them at night at a vocational or community college. Then if you want to further expand into Accounting after having tried it out you have a solid foundation to build on at less outlay than going straight for an Accounting degree. Either way knowing the basics won't do you any harm job hunting even if you decide later on that it's not an area you are interested in. In Australia the credits from bookkeeping courses at TAFE (a vocational college) are transferable to most major Australian Universities so I am assuming here something similar is available in the US. I know of 2 people that have studied toward getting Accounting Degrees and eventually went on to became CPA's this way while working in various Account Clerk and then Accounts positions, and planned on doing it myself at one point. Sorry for any confusion, hope that is clearer. I am sorry if I annoyed any accountants out there that seemed to think I was trying to talk her out of becoming an Accountant, I was simply trying to offer an alternative route.

I did accounting/bookeeping for 10 years, I never got any real qualifications and just kind of drifted into the work starting as an account clerk..[ ]..the work really isn't that exacting, despite what you hear...[].. The main skill you really need to have is to be systematic..[]..My favorite part of the job was starting with a huge stack of unorganized documents and slowly processing them and organizing them and ending up with a nice neat report that summarized them. All of that is certainly true for the sort of roles a lot of people do who don't get the qualifications. Understanding double entry bookkeeping is not difficult, I always compare it to times tables and you probably learned those just fine. And most accounting software is designed to try to lead you down the correct path. I'm a big 4 auditor with several years post qualifying experience and I don't do anything like that at work, nor do any of my trainees or my client contacts, all of whom are qualified or at least part qualified accountants. In fact all my clients are organisations that are big enough not to have openings that you could do without formal training. So if you're after something more taxing you'll need more formal training. Depending on what exactly you want to do you'll get by with more or less of the formal training and experience. My feeling is that if you're happy not to progress much you could probably achieve what you want to achieve with a small number of classes. The only danger is that once you have your dream role with minimal qualifications somebody may come along rejig the job descriptions and decide that the role requires a more formal qualification. That happened to my aunt so in her 40s she found herself at night school gaining a more formal qualification.

I am sorry if I annoyed any accountants out there that seemed to think I was trying to talk her out of becoming an Accountant, I was simply trying to offer an alternative route. You didn't and I didn't mean to belittle all the bookkeepers out there either - we've all got a role to play and I think we're all getting at the same thing. There is a broad spectrum of roles that fall under accounting in the widest sense and one needs to think bout what exactly one is looking for and there are different ways of getting to the different ends of the spectrum and different things to think about :)

And finally, look athttp://www.srainternational.org/sra03/index.cfm and their courses