PwC's diverse graduate intake
Looking at the backgrounds of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ latest graduate intake is both revealing and encouraging, demonstrating – hopefully - the diverse direction in which the profession is heading.
The 125 graduates are drawn from 15 from fifteen countries including China, India, Kenya, Russia and South Africa as well as the UK.
The majority studied here, though academically, they are a mixed bag. Over 60% of the group qualified in subjects outside of the traditional degree disciplines such as accounting, business and economics. That's no bad thing either.
Some 45% are female (which PwC says outperforms the sector’s average female application rate of 41%) and 31% are from an ethnic minority background. This, the firm boasts, exceeds the UK university population figures.
The firm is also tapping into the UK’s 'hidden' graduate talent pool of those who wait to get a proper job - 43% are aged 25 or over, with an average age of 24.4 (which is up on last year).
The fact that the firm has an April intake (September is its norm) is down to work / life balance issues – ‘a growing trend for recently qualified graduates wanting to travel or take time out, without postponing their career for a year’.
It’s the sort of broad cross section we would all want to see joining the profession. I do hope that in a decade’s time when the cream of this crop rises to the top (at PwC or elsewhere) it is equally representative. I always prefer to be optimistic about these things though the stats are less encouraging.
According to the Financial Reporting Council’s most recent analysis, the proportion of female members of the main UK institutes has risen steadily from 24% in 2000 to 29% in 2005. Yet the percentage of female students has been stable since 2000 at the considerably higher level of 48%. That’s a big drop-off that’s not easily explained.
The 2007 Accountancy Age Top 50 painted an equally grim picture. It revealed that on average women accounted for less than10% of partners within the firms and partners from ethnic minority groups (of either sex) only made up 5.9% of the total.
Not good. At this point I could thunder that too little has changed in the last decade to be overly optimistic. Instead I'll say that the PwC stats do make me hopeful.
I would like to be as optimistic as you are. Perhaps in the UK, it will be different. Unfortunately, in the US, although the firms are hiring at the entry level in a very broad and diverse way, we also see the significant drop of this diversity when it comes time to promote to partner. In addition, the scooping up of the foreign students from US universities and granting of H1B visas to them (a kind of indentured servitude in suit and tie) under Big 4 sponsorship has a downside. We are seeing that they are the first to go when layoffs occur and their legal status in the country is immediately jeopardized as a result. The firms are not making a real commitment to them, only taking advantage of a hungry more desperate talent pool than can be exploited for a year or two then thrown overboard.
Posted by Francine McKenna | April 30, 2008 3:39 PM
Francine
I'm an optimist at heart, though I'm stretching myself on this one. Ethnic minority representation among Big Four partners is still exceptionally poor with the Top 50 average propped up by more diverse smaller firms. And while there are more female partners these days, the number of female qualified accountants employed by the Top 50 firms has actually declined.
Damian
Posted by Damian Wild | April 30, 2008 4:01 PM