Gies Dean Brooke Elliott On Accounting’s Future, Enrollment Challenges & Innovation At Scale

Brooke Elliott

At Illinois Gies College of Business, Dean Brooke Elliott has a front-row seat to the rapidly shifting landscape of graduate business education. In a recent wide-ranging conversation with Poets&Quants, she spoke candidly about the pressures facing accounting programs, the impact of international enrollment declines, and why innovation is the only sustainable path forward.

ACCOUNTING PROGRAMS UNDER PRESSURE

Elliott acknowledges the volatility in demand for accounting programs nationwide. Gies offers multiple pathways — a one-year residential Master of Science in Accountancy for students without an undergraduate degree in the field, a fully online MSA that serves working professionals, and a 4+1 Master of Accounting Science program for Illinois undergraduates. Each is experiencing different pressures.

While the MSA and iMSA continue to thrive, the 4+1 has seen softening demand. “Over the last few years, there have been a decline in the number of students choosing accountancy as an undergraduate major,” Elliott says. “Many of those have shifted to finance, but now with finance placements slowing, we’re seeing an uptick back in accounting. That cycle has played out before.”

INTERNATIONAL STUDENT DEPENDENCY

Like many U.S. business schools, Gies has been challenged by swings in international enrollment. Elliott said that recent visa issues kept “a couple hundred” graduate students from arriving on campus — an enrollment shortfall representing several million dollars in tuition revenue.

But Gies’ early investments in online programs have helped buffer that risk. “What we know about our online programs is they attract a domestic market,” Elliott says. “They’ve been a natural diversification to the risk of our over-reliance on international students.”

Residential graduate programs carry higher margins, she adds, but online enrollment growth — along with record undergraduate enrollment — has helped offset the losses.

INNOVATION AS DNA

Elliott returns often to the theme of innovation. In her first year as dean, she set four “purpose-driven goals”: expand access to education, invest in faculty and staff, deliver an unmatched learner experience, and build stronger alumni communities. That required both resources and a willingness to take risks.

“We are innovators — it’s in our DNA,” she says. “But to be innovative, you have to be in a strong financial position because you have to be willing and able to take risks that others can’t.”

That risk tolerance has shown up in Gies’ rapid adoption of AI and digital teaching tools, including the planned use of faculty avatars that can update course content on demand and potentially serve as 24/7 teaching assistants. Transparency, she stresses, will be key: students will always be told when an avatar is being used, and faculty will maintain control over their likeness.

“Anytime you’re in an environment of uncertainty, the tendency is to freeze. But if we do nothing, what we do now — which is excellent — won’t be known as excellent in two, three, five years,” Elliott says. “The only way to stay ahead is to keep innovating.”

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