The formal accounting laboratory in elementary accounting should be eliminated as a part of the curriculum for college credit toward graduation. The trend in the past has been to eliminate the formal laboratory in such classes as advanced and cost accounting, statistics, and economic research in special fields of business administration. The laboratory should be voluntary; in place of a required session each week there should be a recitation or discussion period. Such a policy will raise the standards of the elementary accounting program at the university level. The plan also will provide more efficient use of the laboratory facility and the faculty member's tune. The effectiveness of the accounting program is not impaired by the adoption of such a plan. It is impossible to judge the difference in the student's acquisition of elementary accounting knowledge, whether the laboratory is formal or voluntary. The students prefer the voluntary basis of study rather than the supervised and scheduled period because it gives them more flexibility in the budgeting of their study time. It also gives the student the feeling that the standard is comparable to that for other courses in his program, and that elementary accounting on the university level has one training characteristic which differs from that of the high school or the business college.