Last Saturday I was
part of that great autumnal experience – tail-gating and a football game at a
major American university.
For non-US readers
perhaps unfamiliar, the rituals partake of religious cults: Adherents converge
in vast throngs, dressed in exotic pilgrims’ vestments of bizarre colors. They
drink copiously of the sacred brew, they invoke the spirits of sunny weather
and the glow of victory, and they noisily exhort their muscular youth to inspired
feats of glory.
Secondary to its
storied gridiron history, this school is also a major supplier of feedstock to
the accounting profession’s voracious appetite for new recruits, through its
large departments of accounting and finance.
So because my
generation’s children have grown to be college students and fresh alumni, the convivial
afternoon gatherings around grills and coolers in the stadium parking lot also gave a chance for
some rough field research on that age group’s attitude toward their studies and
the state of the profession’s process of self-renewal – first-hand inquiry of
bright young graduates prepared for the bottom rung of a new career ladder.
Caleb Newquist, Francine McKenna and the Junior Deputy Accountant give a
lot more attention to the dynamics and travails of the firms’ recruiting and
retention issues than I can. But the results of four discussions amid the
marching bands and the waving pennants, although plainly anecdotal and
unscientific, do give pause:
- One new
accounting graduate, having spent a Big Four internship assigned to the box
ticking of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance work, was bailing out on debits and
credits altogether and re-orienting for law school. - A second,
well into a master’s program under-written by a large firm where his job offer
awaits, is primarily motivated to obtain his degree and pass the CPA exam by
the salary bonuses that are promised at each step. - The
youngest new alumna, celebrating her last weekend before reporting to be junior
audit staff in a major-city office of another of the Big Four, expressed her
ambiguity in the phrase, “My life is about to be over!" - Meanwhile
the eldest of the group, an ex-survivor of three staff years in yet another large
firm, is wildly happy having moved to a new position as financial controller at
a division of one of her former clients.
A large-firm
leader once put it to me that the main purpose of hiring new university graduates
is to cultivate staff accountants to become the next generation of managers and
partners. If so – although the depth of malaise
revealed by my brief survey of this decade’s best and brightest may not
generalize – neither is it cause for confidence in the profession’s ability to
stay on top of the talent level demanded for the retention of its reputation
and credibility.
Those engaged with
both our students and our future are advised accordingly.
Postscript:
Our celebration
took place at a leading church-affiliated school, seriously conservative in its
theology, culture and politics. Although it would never condone the burning of
a Koran, it is likewise not likely to permit the opening of a mosque on its
campus any time soon.
For all the
atavistic hoopla around the game, Saturday was also the ninth anniversary of
September 11. It was an affecting moment, to stand with 80,000 people in a
moment of silence for all the casualties of that awful day, to join in a prayer
of remembrance, and to unite in the nation’s anthem while our flag was raised
high and lowered in honor to half-staff.
In that context,
the home team’s inability to hold off the visitors’ last-minute scoring drive
for the win seemed not to matter quite so much.
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