- Higher UK University Tuition Fees Causing Rethink on Generation Y Recruitment
- Women Under-Represented at Senior Levels in Firms
The number of trainees studying to become accountants in the UK’s top 60 professional accounting firms increased by 8% to 13,500 in 2012, according to the latest annual survey published by tax and accounting services provider CCH, part of Wolters Kluwer, the global information services group.
The enduring capacity of the accountancy profession to provide a career path is revealed in a survey published in Accountancy magazine by CCH. The rise in trainees comes in spite of recent redundancy rounds at leading firms such as KPMG and Mazars.
But the Big Four UK firms dominate the accountancy training world. Between them, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young account for more than 9,500 trainees, up from 8,864 in 2011. This figure represents nearly three quarters of the entire accountancy firm trainee population of Britain.
Accountancy magazine editor, Sara White, says: “It is perhaps no wonder that the UK Competition Commission has raised concerns about the extent of the Big Four’s alumni network. The firms know that they will not keep hold of all their trainees but hope they will look favourably on their old firms if and when they are in a buying position elsewhere.”
Although trainee numbers suggest it is business as usual for the firms, in reality there have been major changes in the way they take on and coach their budding partners of the future.
Such changes have been driven partly by the recent hike in tuition fees at British universities, which has made many potential students question whether they actually need a university degree before pursuing a career in accountancy. And the financial crisis has led to what one graduate recruiter, Richard Irwin, head of student recruitment at PwC, describes as a flight to security. But at the same time there have been the increasing challenges of making a career attractive to Generation Y.
The firms now offer a number of routes into the profession – internships, school leaver programmes and combined training and degree courses. The number of apprenticeships is also taking off – with PwC alone offering 60 places last summer to trainees under the professional services higher apprenticeship framework in its tax practice.
However, the firms still predominantly recruit their trainees from university campuses.
Gender gap
There is clear evidence, however, that fewer women are being attracted to the profession than men, with around a third of trainees being female. Fewer still make it to the top positions of partners or directors in firms – currently less than 17% of partners in the Top 60 accountancy firms are women.
Steve Varley, managing partner at Ernst & Young, is quoted in the Accountancy article, saying that he now only mentors women in the firm. ‘We have an aspirational goal that at least 30% of all our new UK partners are women and 10% of all new partners will be black or from an ethnic minority background by 2015.”
