Five years’ time… how long will it take you to qualify?

Some 174,416 accountancy students have been studying for over five years to ‘get qualified’. That’s 30% of all the students signed up with ACCA, CIMA, CIPFA, ICAEW, CAI, ICAS and AIA.

The worry is that this figure is up slightly on the year before.

The figures compiled by the Financial Reporting Council show there are 587,441 students studying with the seven bodies based in the UK and Ireland.

ACCA may have the most students still study with them after half a decade at 133,178, but at 30% this isn’t the biggest percentage. Some 48% of CIPFA students (2,554) are still trying to get qualified five years after starting their journey. At CIMA the figure of 33,294 represents 33.7% of all its students.  But the highest percentage is students signed up to the AIA – over half its students (2,738) are ‘still students’ after five years.

The concern must be that the percentage of students now studying over five years has increased at all the bodies, the pandemic might be the culprit here.

The accountancy body with the lowest percentage of students still studying after five years is the ICAEW. Just 5% of its students are still studying after this time. At the CAI, the Irish institute the figure is 8.9% and at ICAS it is 10%.

Check out the full story in the latest issue: https://issuu.com/pqpublishing/docs/pq_feb22_combined