There was time when a CA was treated equal to the ones who cleared Civil Services. With the advent of Technology, a lot of things around us have changed. People started flocking into the Information and Technology sector and none seemed to care about the professional courses in Commerce. But even then, the value of our course never abated. But things are a little different now, technology has not only made our job easy but also become a bane as it established competitors for us in the corporate world. Everyone today has access to online coaching, material and updated information.
Well, if you are not getting my point. Let me state an example.
Couple of guys, X and Y apply for a same job in Finance.
X- CA (Not a rank holder but cleared all the levels in first attempt, Poor presentation and Communication skills)
Y- An MBA grad from a Tier-2/Tier-3 B-School+CFA L2/FRM(Having excellent command over English, A mediocre in Academics)
The company will not pick a CA unless it is more relevant to traditional Accounting and Auditing which may have a less payscale.
On the other hand, MBA guys from Tier-2/Tier-3 Business Schools are having better exposure and skills demanded in the corporate world. They are more focused on skills than preparing for the College examinations. A lot of them are now going for professional courses like CFA, FRM and an Engineering friend of mine did CPA.
Members may argue here saying things like "Knowledge is more important", "Everything gets set in 3-5 years", "Be Proud to be a CA", "We are given more respect in society", "Stop posting wrong about the Institute" etc. But isn't this something like sweeping dust under the carpet? How relevant are these terms for 2015?
My point is clear, we are more focused on theory than practice. Of course, we do have an opportunity of doing an internship which less of learning and more of working. Things have to change, the nature of articleship has to change allowing students to learn a lot of other things apart from the CA Final syllabus. A lot of CAs have a difficulty in communicating in English and you can't expect him to bag a high payig job in corporate inspite of having a lot of knowledge.
For an example, I am a student doing my CA Final and my friend just started his second semester in one of the IIMs. I flunked my IPC exams a couple of times and it was a complete break-down for me as I lost by a very thin margin in the second attempt. Now, even after getting decent marks in the third attempt, I am looking for alternatives.
A lot of students are now going for B.Com+MBA+CFA/FRM, instead of CA as they feel the path is more certain. Also, the pay is similar to CA. A friend of mine, who had to quit CA at the CPT level as it was hard for him to cope up with commerce, chose to do BCom and learn programming languages. Now, he is earning as high as Rs.70,000 from the first year of his job. Corporates, I think, are more interested in skills and talent than the number of degrees a person after his name.
The reason behind asking this question is to know the perspective of the members regarding exclusion of syllabus which is outdated and reduction in period of articleship in hours/days.
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