I dunno about the asian thing, maybe its a NSW thing, in the Big 4 Melbourne Office I was at, out of more than 300 audit staff, there were about 15 asians total. Thats what, less than 5%?
As for boring, I'm a very boring person and like to be around people who are boring and don't rock the boat too much. Unfortunately one of the bad things for me about working at Big 4 is its all a bit too party-ish. Its like being at uni again since like 80% are in their 20's and its all a bit too much of a social atmosphere for me.
And I think you mean the GradDip/Cert in CA Foundations. This is a distance learning course. The GradDip.CA is the actual CA Program where you have to attend discussion (focus) groups etc.
I think its because of teh evolving nature of accounting where better thinkers are required, not just skilled technicians. The accounting profession realises that some of its most creative thinkers and innovators are from non traditional backgrounds and haven't been (brainwashed) taught into accepting the status quo on how contemporary accounting practice is conducted.
An example is Robert Kaplan, a real innovator in Management Accounting, and he originally was a trained Engineer.
The firms don't want to admit it, but they don't want people who clients can't relate to. Which unfortunately means...you know who. So it seems that they'd rather take "suitable" grads from other areas, force them to do a CA Conversion course, and then get them to do their Chartered Accounting qualifications (for accounting lines I mean).
I think it might not necessarily be a bad thing because by increasing the scoping range there will invariably be much higher calibre of people in the profession.
I think it doesn't seem obvious at first but the actual number of "suitable" accounting grads seems to be decreasing. When you factor out the non resident studets, my uni (melb) graduates less than 200 (I estimate) or so accounting students every year.
