Theory of Diminishing value of Chartered Accountants
Scenario:
Candidates passing CA exams are not getting good jobs. Not much industry is hiring these professionals because there is a sudden increase in the passing percentage of the students.
Reason Identified:
Candidates passing CA exam but not doing genuine Articleship or most commonly known as dummy Articles.
Theory behind identifying such group:
As CA course is a very prestigious and a very difficult course, it requires a lot of effort, hard work, intelligence and sacrifices. Most of the candidates passing the intermediate group have sufficient intelligence and seriousness that they are capable of doing hard work if proper guidance is provided.
Such guidance is very well provided by many coaching classes imparted by both ICAI and other private institutes.
A dummy article and a genuine article both studies from the same faculty, both possess high intelligence, both work hard and excel.
A genuine article is at an advantage than the dummy student when it comes to understand practical subjects like costing, law, audit, taxation and almost all subjects. Such is the beauty of the CA Course. But sadly this beauty is polluted by the dummy candidates as the practical knowledge of the candidate doing Articleship is not tested and when he writes the exam with other type of students.
Here lies the root cause of the problem.
Because of hard work both type of candidate pass. Majority of dummy articles pass with high percentage and some also come in Merit (the whole India is aware of one such case) along with candidates doing proper Articleship who handles work, clients, manages time, priorities and his studies as well (which is the core principle behind the Articleship programme in CA Course).
However the world never appreciates what is fake and their reality gets exposed at the time of interview or subsequently. They are punished by way of lower package or rejections. This is what is demoting the CA profession. But the world is not very kind to appreciate the genuine candidates. The employer is always upon cost minimization and does not pay much to the genuine candidates on the explanation that a more qualified candidate is working or ready to work at a lower salary.
THIS IS A VERY GRAVE SITUATION. The problem is not the high passing percentage but the quality of candidates passing the exams.
But identifying the problem is only 10% of the work. Finding a solution is the remaining 90%. I am attempting to provide a solution for this problem
Proposed Solution for the identified problem.
The CA Final exam should consist of an extra 9th Paper called as Advanced Auditing and should be applicable to students appearing both groups and individual groups as well.
The paper should be introduced as follows:
While filling up the CA Final exam there should be an extra form for paper 9- Advanced Auditing. The particulars of the form should contain
1) Name of the CA Firm in which a candidate is registered.
2) Number of Partners: 1, 2 to 4, 4 & above.
This would divide the candidate in to proprietary firms, small partnership and large partnership firms
3) Area of work mostly dealt in should be asked such as Direct taxation, Indirect taxation, Statutory Audits, Internal Audit, other assignments and overall exposure. This would help in dividing the candidates in say 18 various categories of candidates.
18 different question papers should be designed for these categories of students which would cover the broad areas of the various fields of Audit like ways of Audit, Technique of Audit, Client handling and a step more than the theoretical knowledge of Audit. This will judge the practical knowledge of a candidate and would definitely add to the filtrations criteria. This would ensure a quality control. Such step will instill a need of proper Articleship and strike a fear among them who do not take Articleship seriously and indulge in wrong practices.
- Avinash Kumar
CAclubindia
