Canadian Accountants Find Innovation in Education

The new CA School of Business program [1], created as a partnership among the Institutes of Chartered Accountants of several western provinces, will offer a program that leads to the Chartered Accountant certification in Canada.

Candidates entering the graduate-level program must possess a four-year undergraduate degree. The program is being compared to the fifth year of the new U.S. 150-hour rule, the main difference being that this program is administered by the profession itself rather than the universities.

The program encompasses six major competency areas: Organization Effectiveness, Control and Risk Management, Finance, Performance Measurement, Tax, Information Technology and Assurance.

The entire academic program is electronic. Students complete tasks and then e-mail the work to a reviewer. There is a 48-hour turnaround for the review process. Students spend 36 months in the program, completing their studies and their 36-month experience requirement simultaneously. The program is modeled after a real-life accounting firm simulation. Students participate in the training while working in an approved training office where the learned skills are utilized.

When the program is completed, students are ready to proceed in their careers as Chartered Accountants.