According to my D, it’s not the math that’s hard for students - it’s the technical concepts. It’s like bhs’s friend says, you either get it or you don’t.
You either like it or you don’t.
At D’s business school, intro accounting was okay but intermediate was the weed-out. And it wasn’t the math that was the killer; it was the technical detail and the logic behind the concepts. If that makes sense.
One person’s boring is another person’s fun (or one person’s “hard” is another person’s sweet spot.) I say this as someone who doesn’t understand accounting at all but who works as an organic chemist.
And to the OP - good luck to you and your son! It sounds to me like he currently has a difficult choice: major in something he thinks he’d like (but may not lead to his goal) or something that bores him (but that may gave more potential upside down the road).
It’s hard. I’m just afraid of what may happen if he can’t get into the DEA or FBI even with the accounting degree. What happens then? If his fallback degree is in something he hates, is it really a fallback?
I sure don’t have the answers, but I wish him luck!
Perhaps the son will end up majoring in CJ with a minor in business admin, if offered. Agree with an earlier comment that the first year of business school classes are sufficiently general so he could switch into another business major if he hates accounting.
Also, it might be wise to consider a foreign language as a second major if interested in a career in law enforcement.
OP- since I was one of the original posters who suggested that majoring in Criminal Justice was not a good path to the FBI, I’m happy to see that you are back to update us.
If your son found accounting boring, then there a couple of possibilities- 1- the course he took was, in fact, boring but college level accounting might be interesting; 2- he has no interest in accounting and will wither and be crushed by four years of accounting; 3- He MIGHT become interested in accounting if it were more relevant to his ultimate goals.
But I would never suggest that a kid pursue a “boring” major for the sake of a career goal like the FBI- mainly because the work that agents do is NOTHING like what you see on TV. If he’s excited about the swashbuckling and the drama- most FBI work IS spreadsheets, computer, office work, meticulous investigative work which is not “out there” like it is on a television show. ANY investigative work- whether federal, state or local- is going to be computer based. That’s the world we live in. Big drug cartels are brought down because a group of investigators trace large cash transactions to and from a bank which are suspicious, or because there’s a suspicious paper trail for a laundromat which ought to have revenues of 2K per week but seems to be bringing in 100K per week.
That’s why the FBI likes accountants.
If your son is interested in law enforcement- find out why. That will help determine if he should go back to his criminal justice major (good for parole officers, local law enforcement, jobs in prisons or anything involving incarceration and policy) or if he should be considering something else.
If he hates accounting he shouldn’t major in accounting but he needs to leave the door open for the possibility that if he hates accounting, he’ll also hate working for the FBI.
Maybe something like data analytics, either in the business school or through computer science, would be useful for the OP.