The Hindu Business Line : Nine out of ten did not move up the CA chain

WOODY Allen would claim to have been thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam. Why? "I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me." If it were a CA exam, instead, Woody would have only found much melancholy in the boy or girl next to him. CA exams aren't too cheering, either to take or to comment about.

"A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers," is a H. L. Mencken quote; but that's a privilege not available for those pursuing the chartered accountancy course, for your papers are to be valued by somebody else and your fate hangs, if not by a slender thread, by the ink of the evaluator's pen.

The previous article in these columns (Business Line, June 21), which examined the performance of Foundation and Intermediate students over the last 50 years, revealed that the pass percentage never crossed 30.

Yet, those who cleared the Intermediate exam during the nine years may count themselves blessed manifold, because a dismal 10 per cent of those who appeared completed the mid-level to move on to the Final course. This is in spite of 26-27 per cent result in the individual Groups and 14 per cent for those who took both groups.

In May 2003, the pass percentage for `both groups' was the least ever in the history of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Attempts

The ICAI does not publish information on the number of students appearing for the first time, and their performance, though such a transparency existed in the early 1970s on some occasions. Whether it was Robert Bruce or Mahmud of Ghazni serving as inspiration for students, one may never know, but an analysis of attempts is necessary to know the behaviour of learning curve. Perhaps the outcome of such a study can help the Institute in making necessary amendments to the exam system, such as the allowable number of attempts, the question paper pattern, and so on.

An attempt, therefore, is made to break up a hundred appearances into constituent `attempts' and study the result. What it shows ultimately is that five students complete both Groups, while an equal number join them in moving on to Final from the two streams of those who have been hopping group-wise.

Assuming that all students who enrolled in a previous year appear in the subsequent year (that is, students enrolling in 1994 will appear in 1995), the average number of students who appear within the first two attempts equal 40 per cent. On the same basis, after considering the number of students who pass out, the average appearance for the third and fourth attempts as well as for the fifth and sixth attempts cumulatively works out to 61 per cent and 80 per cent respectively.

In summary, those taking the exams for the first and second time accounted for 40 per cent of the appearances; third and fourth attempts made up 20 per cent; fifth and sixth, another 20 per cent; and those who were visiting the exam halls for the sixth, seventh and more times accounted for the balance 20 per cent.

A few observations

One finds accelerated growth in the appearance of students during the nine years under study. This could be because of allowing the Foundation students to register for the articleship on their successful completion.

On analysing the data from the table by using the moving averages the following emerge:

Without considering the backlog of students, on an average 42 per cent of the students successfully completed the examination out of the total enrolment during these years. The effective average would be 30-35 per cent. The average number of students who appeared for the exams for the period is around 80,000 per annum. However, it should be noted that this was due to an increasing trend during those years.

Out of students who complete either of the two groups, some complete the Intermediate level on account of passing the other group earlier.

The average appearance of those students who have already passed one group is around 14 per cent of the overall appearance and success ratio out of these categories is around 37 per cent.

On an average, 33 per cent of backlog students appear in a given exam. For example, in 2002, around 1.2-lakh students appeared overall against a backlog of 1.84-lakh students in the two examinations.

In each appearance, 10 per cent of students complete the examination and at least 12 per cent of them complete any one group.

Analysis of failures

From the input-output table it can be noticed that 78 per cent (that is, 100 appearances minus 22 pass) of the students have failed. Analysis of such failures was carried out using a random sample of data published in 1997 by the Southern India Regional Council of the ICAI. The table reveals that 4 per cent of students failed in `aggregate', that is, failing to get the required average of 50 per cent. At least one in four students (26 per cent) is faring badly, losing out in all three papers. Almost a similar number (24 per cent) fails in one paper only, and two papers.

A nagging question, to wrap up, is whether the CA chain is so slippery that most students are not able to move up to further levels.

To access Mentor archives visit: thehindubusinessline.com/mn/arcmn/index.htm

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