Ernst & Young Say There's "No Evidence" A Uni Degree Makes For A Better Accountant

Ernst & Young, one of the biggest accountancy firm’s going, will ditch the entry criteria of a tertiary degree for prospective employees in the UK.

E&Y’s managing partner for talent, Maggie Stilwell, said the change in their hiring process comes after research revealed there was “no evidence to conclude that previous success in higher education correlated with future success in subsequent professional qualifications undertaken.”

Real talk: they see no connection between having a degree and professional success.

“Academic qualifications will still be taken into account,” she added, sneakily inserting a pun to prove that accountants are actually hilarious.

However, she continued, degrees “will no longer act as a barrier to getting a foot in the door.”

Ernst & Young is one of the biggest employers of graduates in the UK, where it offers 200 graduate positions each year.

As of 2016, expect those 200 positions to be even more highly sought after, with the pool of potential applicants suddenly expanded.

If the process works and Ernst & Young's experiment reveals that the best employees might not just be those with the best uni results, they might end up rolling it out worldwide.

What say you? Should more employers drop the entry-level criteria of a university degree? Are they wrongly encouraging applicants to not be fully prepared for the role? Or, are they helping to destroy the stigma around those who’ve not sought out a university pathway?

There’s only one thing we truly know.