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If you think it is bad now, just wait until this is the standard: IFRS
Eventually all companies are going to switch over to reporting under IFRS standards since it makes the financial documents easier to read for investors.
The downside, however, is that once that happens all the college in the world will be teaching the EXACT same thing. Your india accounting graduate will know the exact same thing as the american graduate.
To make matters worse, the big 4 firms are already multinational firms so its very easy to simply send the work overseas and have an indian guy do the job for a fraction of the cost. The people in the developed countries will simply be sales men and face to face customer service agents (with an accounting degree).
It'll take 5-10 years for this to happen but still.
I fail to see the down side.
We need LESS 'people to interprete' and more 'plain speak'
I'm not expecting to make 50k right out of school, I doubt anyone is. But at least 30k-35k. I would not take a job for 20k, a recent high school graduate would make more than me.
I would rather do an internship than to work for $10 an hr with a bachelor's degree. Or I would go back to school & study for my CPA exam instead of settling for a cr@ppy job.
At the end of the day, you may not have many options. I know tons of people who work for 9-10$/hr and have bachelor degrees. Next time you to go to the store or go out to eat, ask the clerks working there about their education. You'll be surprised at the responses. I had one guy tell me he had a masters in chemistry as he waited my table.
Oh and as far as CPA goes, it is not necessarily the road to riches. Getting a job at a CPA firm is difficult and you have to compete against unemployed people with 10-20 years experience. No easy task.
I know this because I have a BA degree in accounting and I got stuck working those, crappy 10$/hr bookkeeping jobs, unfortunately. I had no options at the time.
Luckily my small business started generating enough profits for me to live off of so I no longer work in accounting.
If I could do it over again, I would have never gone to college.
Some free (and perhaps worthless) advice from an old geezer, retired accountant for new or soon to be accountants:
Accounting is an excellent background from which one should plan to move on to broader functions. If you stay in the "nuts and bolts", debit/credit/general ledger end of the field simply doing advanced book work - you'll lose the compensation game.
An accounting education does prepare you with a valuable skill set - the ability to do and comprehend the numbers/data side of any activity. You need to build on that ability and think outside the balance sheet if you want to be valued and paid accordingly.
Many non-accountants lack the ability to assess the numbers/data which underlie go/no go decisions for major business and public policy decisions. That makes the 21st century accountant valuable, but he/she has to be conversant with the numbers/data related to 21st century issues, not just debits and credits.
Think of yourself as a data master, of which financial numbers are a critically important but not exclusive component. Ultimately, the financial costs of any activity have to quantified for decision making but don't overlook the need for the ability to deal with non-financial data underlying the development of financial impacts.
Specialization in taxation may be an exception to that generality, but you'd best go the multi-national arena if you do the tax gig. Otherwise, you'll be replaced by a software system and/or an offshore bookkeeper.
Two hypothetical examples: Which one do you think will be higher paid over the long term?
Graduate A - takes a job in a traditional accounting function for a corporation doing the usual staff accountant gig.
Graduate B - takes a job with an insurance outfit or public agency trying to quantify the cost/risk of potential contamination of a water supply source due to "fracking" extraction of natural gas. Or is crunching the numbers for the trade-offs in water welfare to farmers versus the utilization of water for industry/urban usage. How much water (currently some farmers are still using POTABLE water) does it take to produce one ton of wheat? What is the true cost of that water? What is the value of the wheat?
Get my point? In each case, the job is about the "numbers/data", but B will be working in a growth field, A is on a time limited path to obsolescence.
If I were a youngster just starting out I'd bust my chops to get a foot in the door in a position where I was positioned to deal with the numbers/data side of emerging 21st century priorities: water, energy, food production, mitigation/prevention of environmental contamination; the list goes on.
And yes, I aware that the foot in the door is the critical and most difficult step currently facing you, but that is another topic.
Thats my $0.002 folks, good luck.
PS - forensic accounting/fraud investigation was the most fun I had in my career, it was a blast!
Last edited by Pilgrim21784; 08-13-2011 at 06:16 AM..
At the end of the day, you may not have many options. I know tons of people who work for 9-10$/hr and have bachelor degrees. Next time you to go to the store or go out to eat, ask the clerks working there about their education. You'll be surprised at the responses. I had one guy tell me he had a masters in chemistry as he waited my table.
Oh and as far as CPA goes, it is not necessarily the road to riches. Getting a job at a CPA firm is difficult and you have to compete against unemployed people with 10-20 years experience. No easy task.
I know this because I have a BA degree in accounting and I got stuck working those, crappy 10$/hr bookkeeping jobs, unfortunately. I had no options at the time.
Luckily my small business started generating enough profits for me to live off of so I no longer work in accounting.
If I could do it over again, I would have never gone to college.
That is very depressing. So did you graduate in our recent recession? I never even considered the possibility of making 20k-25k a year I thought that those jobs were usually filled by people with associate degrees or retired accountants. WOW!
If I get a staff accountant position for 30-35K I'll be very happy. I'm afraid I'll end up having to work as a clerk, bookkeeper, etc for 10-12 a hour though. I'm going to owe 350 a month in loans so that wage would be difficult.
If I get a staff accountant position for 30-35K I'll be very happy. I'm afraid I'll end up having to work as a clerk, bookkeeper, etc for 10-12 a hour though. I'm going to owe 350 a month in loans so that wage would be difficult.
Just keep up with your career services center at your school. I got my job by answering a job posting that was sent out from my school. It is very important to take advantage of campus recruiting.
Which college did you graduate from? Was your GPA high? Did you do internships?
I got my accounting cert at virginia commonwealth in richmond. I didn't have any accounting experience, just about 3 years bank call center experience. I didn't take advantage of campus recruiting whenever I was getting my bachelors degree, I made sure to take advantage for my cert tho. My gpa was not that great at all, it would have been been a factor if I was going into public accounting, but I went industry instead...
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I thought that those jobs were usually filled by people with associate degrees or retired accountants. WOW!
