1) I took a young asociate on a trip to Denver. When he took pictures of the Denver airport I thought it odd, but it is an interesting building I supposed. When he took pictures of the Remaissance Inn we were at I was in shock. This was his first trip more than a weekend drive away from home.

2) I asked an associate to multiply two numbers. The numbers had to be multiplied by hand cause they were too large for a calculator/computer. The calculator would lose precision and give the answer in scientific notation. I learned then that the associate could not do multiplication or division. Had no idea whatsoever how to multiple 2 numbers together.

As for travel — it is something that really helps a person grow. I agree with FM that her questions are good ones and the answers were not good.

What I find amazing (and sad) is that folks graduating with a business degree have no ability to use the computer — simple tools such as Excel and Word are beyond them. Someone posted months ago about learning to use an incremental formula to add one and create a numbered list of things in Excel. This post talked about this as an advanced skill learned by first years. How can anyone leave college these days without a thorough knowledge of these basic computer tools? But then again, I remain amazed that there is this guy on TV who makes money selling CDs that teach you how to use eBay, Excel and Word — as if one really needs a lesson. These are so intuitive it seems like you need about a 10 minute overview and then you can get going.

i could graduate without knowing how to use a calculator and a typewriter. My father had to know the slide rule. It just makes sense that college grads should know some basics.

Clown… we’re not trying to get anyone’s attention. We’re having a conversation. I’m sorry that I can’t fit everything I have to say into ADD-friendly tweets so you can let it go in one ear and out the other on your way to googling Lady Gaga videos. I’m not here to attract new readers. I’m here because I enjoy conversing about accounting-related topics. That’s what we’ve been doing. Your call for brevity is noted, however. I thought I did a good job with my post #43.

@47 FM

I don’t really blame the college graduates for not having diverse backgrounds (it was funny reading your description, since I’m an avid fiction reader (HP6 tonight anyone??), have an active passport with multiple stamps, and am bilingual). Young graduates go where the money is. No one’s getting a $10k higher offer just because they’ve travelled Europe and picked up a language. No one’s offering bonuses for avid fiction-readers. No one (and by these no ones, I really just mean none of the large accounting firms) is paying a dime extra for skills that don’t fit in the education section of a resume. If firms wanted to develop a dynamic leadership base, they would be doing what they could to get outside-the-box (pardon the cliche) thinkers. These attributes aren’t low on their priority list; they didn’t even make the list.

Great story, and by “great” I mean “sad”. Let me add one.

We were on travel and I was engagement manager. On my team were 2 Senior Associates and another Manager. We were staying at a Renaissance hotel. One of my Senior Associates commented that the hotel had a weird name — and mispronounced it. The other Senior Associated nodded and asked the other Manager why they would give a hotel such a weird, difficult-to-pronounce name. (She didn’t correct the pronunciation, just acknowledged it was hard to pronounce.) The Manager shrugged and said “I dunno.” It was a mystery to all three.

I was shocked. To have graduated college and never heard of the Renaissance? All three? Ouch.

That’s the moment when I started to form my opinion about the value of a liberal arts education coupled with a business-related degree versus a a degree that comes from a purely business-related curriculum.

– Tenacious T.

On the subject of a liberal arts education and lack of critical analysis skills of accounting graduates…

I remember the summer of 2006 when I had the privilege of spending a lot of time with the interns we had in the internal audit practice at PwC Chicago. Why me? Well, I had two inside assignments – internal audit for the firm itself and a local client where I managed all their international IA co-sourcing needs. It seemed everyone else considered spending time with the interns a burden and by mid-internship, the majority of them were spending their time in the office with me. There was “trouble” finding things for them to do at clients that didn’t take hours away from others on the team that needed them to meet their goals of >80% chargeability and that didn’t take time away from others on the team to do their “real” work.

I remember their first day… After a morning reception and a few speeches attended by only half of the Managers and Directors (and only a few partners) who were supposed to be their “coaches” for the summer, I had most of the remaining “coaches” all ask me if their “coachees” could come with me for lunch. A reservation I had made for four (I had been hit on early for the same favor by a few more) turned into a lunch for twelve. There I asked them what I usually ask new people I meet: What books have you read lately? Have you traveled recently? Out of the country?

Every one of them said they had not read any fiction for long time as a curriculum that requires 120-150 hours of credits with a >3.5 GPA did not leave much time for leisure reading. And no one at the table that I can recall had a passport and, therefore, no one had done a semester abroad or ever been out of the country. No one spoke a language other than English, not even Spanish, as there were no Hispanics in the group.

Francine

” But perhaps another cause is related to hiring a startingly high preponderance of accounting graduates, some of whom may lack the critical analysis skills that are emphasized in liberal arts studies.”

TT this made me smile.

As the product of an educator father who believes to his core that a strong liberal arts eduction is the foundation of critical thinking and complex reasoning, it seems that perhaps “higher education” has simply become vocational training. It may have been Vigen Guroian who quipped: We treat students like cattle: cattle know what to do, they just don’t know why they do it! The net effect may be as you suggest: associates/managers/partners who lack the cognitive skills to recognize and respond to complex problems and rapid change. Surely the propensity to focus too narrowly on a restricted set of concerns (and skill sets) limits the ability of any organization to develop insightful & effective leaders… as has been observed across all sectors.

I know nothing of the BIg 4 or your industry, but we had a broken model here in Michigan for most of the last 25 years. It finally collapsed under the weight of protecting the model at all costs…

TT, thanks to you, fm & others for the thoughtful dialog.

Around the dot bust time I lost my job. At that time I found that getting a new job at the same salary was difficult. I could have easily taken a job at a 20% pay cut. Seemed like the way to adjust salaries was to let people go and hire in cheaper. So many of us in the tech industry were put out on the streets and we had our salary adjusted that way. In time I managed to get a job with no decrease in pay – but it took a long time and a change in career entirely. So the question really comes to, should firms adjust salaries up AND down based on the situations they are in. In theory (and don’t yell because I certainly wouldn’t want the world to work this way – not at this time of my life… although theoretically it makes the most sense) the right thing is that every year people are reviewed and salaries may be adjusted up or down based on market factors and performance in combination. The way it works now is that salaries can only stay the same or go up (this assumes performance never deteriorates and the market stays as good or better) — so the only way to adjust down is through layoffs.

While I agree that salary increases in the boom were adjusted correctly, the question is whether there is a viable vehicle companies can use to adjust salaries to the new market conditions — and is the only vehicle layoffs? Without such a vehicle there are the problems you mention with new hire salaries and not rewarding the young associates properly.

Salaries were appropriately adjusted during the boom earlier this decade. Having no way to predict the future, companies were paying the market rate for accountants (which increased across the board, public, private, gov’t, wherever). Right now, no one can predict the future either, which is why the companies have a convenient excuse of cutting salaries. However, as with the office I’m in, there are many firms that are DOING JUST FINE, and salaries are being reduced anyway. It would be one thing if they said “associates make this much, seniors make this much, managers make this much” and adjust salaries for those that have inflated salaries from year after year of 20% increases (making it fair that the new associates would get some sort of raise for their hard work, and still paying managers the going rate for their services).

At any rate, if I don’t hurry up and post this, Clown College will be upset. We can’t have that.

And yet here you are.