PwC to end university degree employment requirement

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.

PwC says it's looking "to hire the skills of the future, not the degrees of the future".


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.

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