John Kirk is studying a PhD course at Columbia University with the goal of becoming an accounting professor. When he becomes a professor, his plan is hopefully to work at a top tier business school like Harvard, Columbia or Stanford. As a reason for why he chose accounting for his career, he said he believed that accounting jobs have a lot of good prospects and a fair balance of time and money. When he was studying accounting in undergraduate school, he liked the material and found that he had a natural ability to be successful in accounting.