高中毕业无须经验直接进’普华永道’!(不是学会计/审计专业的我听到以后都好激动!
据《时代报》报道，一家领先的金融公司从今年起将允许12年级的毕业生直接进入该企业担任会计人员或风险管理顾问。另外，至少有其它5家公司也在考虑这种做法。
据了解，这项计划由普华永道会计师事务所（PricewaterhouseCoopers）设计和领导，将会试行18个月。12年级的毕业生将与一些大学毕业生员工一起在公司的核心领域工作，并将能得到商业文凭。此举可降低学生债务水平，并且也能给弱势学生提供更多的机会，因此得到了政府及学校职业顾问的支持。
职业教育和技能厅长安德鲁（Karen Andrews）表示，这项“高等学徒”项目将在下个月开始试行，届时估计将接收250名左右的12年级毕业生。但未来有可能会增加到数千名。他指出，该项目是替代传统的读大学途径的一种好方式。如果学生对金融行业有兴趣，无需去读大学，可以选择这种边学习边赚钱的方式。
职业顾问协会（Careers Advisers Association）新州（NSW）及北领地（ACT）地区的秘书长史密斯（Jenine Smith）则表示，这对于高中毕业生来说是个非常好的机会。既能从中学到许多有用的技能，也无需承担学生债务。
普华永道的人才招聘总监邓肯（Julie Duncan）透露，12年级毕业生所得的薪资将与其他大学未毕业的员工一样，例如那些在边读大学边实习的员工。他们将做同样的工作。他表示，未来工作有无限变化，该企业寻找的是技能型人才，而不是文凭员工。
澳洲大学联盟（Universities Australia）的副首席执行官杰克森（Catriona Jackson）则表示，普华永道的项目是对大学教育的一种补充，而不是与大学竞争。对于很多学生来说，进入大学读书有很多好处，包括能够学习到知识、沟通和批判型思考技能等。但该项目能够为学生提供更大的工作确定性。虽然没有确切数据，但参与该项目，学生最终有90%的机会能够获得一份全职工作。
PwC to end university degree
employment requirement
A leading finance company will let year 12 students bypass university and begin working as accountants and risk management consultants straight after high school from this year, and at least five other companies are in talks to do the same.
The move is being supported by the government and school career advisers as a way to bring down student debt levels and provide more opportunities for disadvantaged students.
The “higher apprenticeship” pilot program, to be launched next month, will target about 250 school-leavers but has the potential to grow to thousands of students, Assistant Minister for Vocational Education and Skills Karen Andrews said.
Designed and led by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the program will run for 18 months and allow school-leavers to get a business diploma while they work alongside graduate employees in core company areas. At least five other companies are expected to participate.
Ms Andrews hailed the program as an alternative to the traditional pathway that “universities have been very good at selling”.
“If you’re thinking about a career in something like finance, we’re saying you don’t have to sign on to a uni course,” Ms Andrews said.
“You have options to get yourself out earning and learning at the same time.”
Secretary of the Careers Advisers Association of NSW and ACT Jenine Smith said this was a “great opportunity” for high school students.
“They’ll have the huge advantage of having an advance qualification [while] they don’t have a student debt,” Ms Smith said.
PwC’s talent acquisition director Julie Duncan said school-leavers would receive the same pay as other non-graduate employees, including trainees who are completing university degrees while they work.
“They’ll have exactly the same career progress as their graduate and non-graduate peers,” Ms Duncan said.
“The future of work is changing and we’re looking to hire the skills of the future, not the degrees of the future.
“That includes students who choose not to go to uni, can’t afford to or just don’t know what they want to do.”
Catriona Jackson, deputy chief executive of representative body Universities Australia, said the PwC program is “a complement, rather than a competitor, to the education offered by universities”.
“For many students, attending university brings a wide range of benefits including specific technical knowledge, communication and critical thinking skills and diverse professional networks.”
Ms Andrews said this pathway could potentially provide greater job certainty for students.
“We don’t have the figures for the higher apprenticeships yet but if you go through a trade apprenticeship you have a 90 per cent chance of having a full-time job at the end of it, and you earn significant money as you go,” she said.
About 77 per cent of people who graduated university with accounting degrees and were seeking work held full-time jobs in 2015, compared to nearly 97 per cent in 1982 and 86 per cent in 2000, a Graduate Careers Australia survey found.
A fall in graduate employment levels has occurred across most disciplines including law, with 91.4 per cent of graduates working full-time in 2015, compared to a peak of 97 per cent of law graduates in 1987.
President of the Law Society of NSW Pauline Wright said law firms in the UK increasingly look at hiring people outside the law discipline, but the approach was unlikely to be adopted in Australia any time soon.
“You don’t want to see your brain surgeon not properly qualified, and in the same way you don’t want someone representing you to not have that proper training,” Ms Wright said.
The PwC program is modelled on a scheme similar to one the company has run successfully in the UK for more than a decade.
It is part of a broader push by the Australian government and industry to “future-proof” jobs against expected changes to the economy.
“It’s all based on us being adaptable,” Ms Duncan said.
“The jobs people are doing will look very different in 20 years. A degree doesn’t mean that’s your job for life.”
The move comes after PwC’s own research found that traditional accounting is the profession most at risk from technology – 5.1 million jobs could be disrupted.
There is a 97.5 per cent chance accounting will be automated in the next 20 years, threatening nearly 264,000 Australian jobs, the 2015 report found.