I am a Chartered Accountant myself. Though not practicing but I have done my articleship. And i strongly feel our institute is not justified in making students undergo articleship of 3 to 3.5 years.
NO other professional course, not even medical students are made to undertake apprenticeship / articleship for such a long period. In medicine the apprentice period is for 6 months. Engineering students also require only 6 months of project work. MBA students have a summer project and a few other projects.
The trouble is not with working for such long. However, everyone must understand that no one trains you for 3 years. Within six months you have to take responsibility for the work that you do. And almost everyone is expected to work diligently and professionally and I am sure most of us do. However no one considers the same as a serious job. And while even after working for 5 years in a professional manner I am considered to be working for only 2 years because articleship is not counted as work experience.
Also I have seen and read about people complaining how various CAs are not concerned about the student's learning but interested in getting their work done. This way we are not creating quality for future CAs. Much better assignments / projects should be part of the curriculum and practical training should come not as ticking with green and red pens but providing much better understanding about business, finance and accounting. Else we would be creating a generation of CAs who would constantly keep getting caught up between petty issues and cause degrowth to their own careers.
I sincerely feel its a very serious issue and there should be some quality brought to our articleship structure.
CAclubindia
