At Accountancy tutors, we have many students from school leavers all the way through to middle age professionals that have benefitted from private tutoring. It is always interesting to listen to our student’s journeys through their accountancy careers where we tailor our teaching style and mentoring to suit everyone’s specific requirements. If we could go back in time to the start of each student’s journey, there are many tips and information we would have liked to share and highlight some myth busters such as that you don’t need to go to university to become a qualified accountant. Such information may have impacted which direction students begin their accountancy careers.

  • Should I go to university?
  • If I go to university, what degree should I take?
  • Starting an accountancy career as a school or college leaver?
  • Are you making a mid-life career change?

These are a few of the big questions students starting out must consider.

 Should I go to university? 

The accountant in me would like to say you don’t need to go to university to become a qualified accountant. From a financial point of view, not going to university would save significant money in student debt, university tuition fees, living in student halls etc. In addition, during the years you would have been at university, you could instead be working in a job with relevant accountancy experience that also covers the cost of your tuition either going to college or with a training provider. Being in employment and the saving of not going to university mounts to a significant sum of money.

However, I have discussed this option with some students and they and their family still choose the university route. One reason for going to university is to have a good university on your CV. However, the most notable reasons are often non-academic such as being away from home for potentially the first time, learning to live independently, making new friends in a different city etc. The decision is completely down to the individual on what feels right. 

If I go to university, which degree should I take?

Naturally, your first guess may be to study a relevant accountancy degree. However, what I’ve discovered over the years is that accountancy students have actually studied all different types of degrees, for instance a recent student studied bio-medical science at university and now works in an accounts department in industry. What many professional accountancy firms look at when hiring is your personality and your intelligence. Therefore, so long as the degree is difficult to achieve, then your CV has a chance of being considered. 

If you want to study an accountancy degree at university, then be aware of the following: a university degree doesn’t equate to a professional qualification. You do get some exam exemptions towards the professional qualifications. However, in my opinion, 3-4 years at university isn’t particularly worth the limited volume of exemptions you get. For instance, with the ICAEW qualification, the first 6 exams can ben taken within 6 months. There are typically no further exemptions beyond this point from having gone to university potentially saving you 2.5-3.5 years to get to the same point in the qualification. With this being said, studying an accountancy degree will still naturally help you through the professional qualification exams later down the line.

Additionally, many accountancy firms would like to start you on a lower standard qualification such as AAT/ATT before moving onto the significant ICAEW, ACCA or CIMA qualifications. This is not always the case, some accountancy firms accept A level students at age 18 straight onto the ICAEW, ACCA or CIMA qualifications. You would need to look into this. 

If you are going to go to university and you want to join a professional accountancy firm at a graduate level afterwards, I may throw you a curve ball to suggest you don’t have to take an accountancy degree. Perhaps do something more left field or slightly different that could make you stand out or be different to the rest of the potential job applicants. For instance, a degree such as Economics has many transferable skills into accountancy and allows you to understand micro and macro impacts on businesses. 

Starting an accountancy career as a school or college leaver

If you’re currently in school, perhaps you’ve recently attended career days or lectures and are now starting to think about what career you want to have after school, you have a few mainstream options. If being a part of an institution such as university doesn’t really suit you, then rest assured accountancy is still a very viable option!

Being a good accountant comes in many forms. You may be a stereotypical number cruncher and a bit of an introvert which is great and there are plenty in the industry that have extremely successful careers. At the same time, if you see yourself more as an extrovert and a ‘people’s person’, an accountancy career is still an exciting proposition. There’s a space in this industry for all people from all walks of life that have a passion for adding value to individuals and/or businesses, charities and many more. This could be from a technical point of view getting the numbers right or from a commercial point of view interpreting the numbers to drive change and influence decision makers who may not be from financial backgrounds. 

The accountancy firms will usually want you to gain an entry level professional qualification such as AAT/ATT for 3-4 years. These qualifications are usually provided by colleges where you will spend part of your time at college to study AAT/ATT and part of your time working for the accountancy firm. Once you have passed these qualifications, you would move onto ICAEW, ACCA or CIMA qualifications that can take a further 3-4 years. If you categorically know you want to become an accountant, this is an extremely attractive route because theoretically if you started AAT at 16 years old, you could become fully qualified for AAT and one of ACA/ACCA/CIMA by the time you are 22 which is the same age of university graduates new to joining accountancy firms in practice. 

Are you making a mid-life career change?

This is the route I decided to take aged 21. I didn’t previously go to university and I didn’t intend to otherwise I would have been wrapped up in education throughout my 20s by going to university and then joining a firm at graduate level. Instead, I managed to successfully get a job in a small accountancy firm training to become a member of the ICAEW. Thankfully, I had some relevant experience working in industry in a finance team as a bookkeeper but with no degree or accountancy exams under my belt at all. Many of the larger firms turned their noses up at the time and had question marks that were too big to take a risk with me. However, the desire to start the qualifications at the ICAEW level is something I fought for which took some persuasion but I managed to get my employer on board. 4 years later, I not only had become a Chartered Accountant but also a Chartered Tax Advisor with CIOT which is extremely challenging. I felt I owed it to myself to out qualify the partners at the firms in the ‘top 100’ that didn’t take me on. In addition, I joined PwC who are the largest professional services firm in the world so that there would never be question marks on my ability again. 

The reason I have told you a bit about my story as the head tutor at Accountancy Tutors is that making a career change can be a difficult move and the accountancy world can sometimes be a bit fickle. I just see it that professional accountants are proud of their qualifications and they are simply protecting the strong reputation the institutes have taken decades to build. They are also protecting applicants as they only take on individuals who they believe have the potential to qualify. For instance, one of the biggest challenges I faced was that I hadn’t picked up a text book in years and going back into study and exam mode was difficult at first; an area we consider at Accountancy tutors.

For the above reasons, many students having made a career change often work in industry. Typically, they may have asked their employer to relocate them to the finance team and put them through qualifications such as CIMA which specialises in management accounting. This is a very popular option and is a worthwhile journey.

Hopefully the information in this blog has provided some food for thought. Take the chance to do some research, talk to a mentor or organise work experience – taking the time to think longer term can help boost your motivation when it comes to starting your studies which can take a reasonable amount of time to achieve. Regardless of what your journey is and what stage you are at, know that Accountancy Tutors is there to help you along the way.

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