Many Grade 12 students believe that if they do not get a university entrance for Finance, then their career in finance is doomed and will be limited and they will not grow to the top of the financial corporate ladder.
This is false news and is simply not true!
The truth of the matter is that the real success in finance is determined by other factors beyond which institute awarded the qualification.
When I studied for my Higher Diploma in Taxation, at a reknowned institute, my lecturer warned us that the accountants were statistically less successful in this subject material than those students who had studied law as their main interest!
This suprised me but at the end of that period of studies I realised why financially trained accountants battled more than legally trained people to grasp the concepts around taxation.
There are univeristy graduates that could not make a success out of their financial careers. Then there are people that never got the necessary marks within the school leaving examinations to get them started in these higher learning institutions.
Among the latter group I found many stronger students and financial people than among those that had great marks in Grade 12 and went stright onto obtaining a degree in finance.
It gets more interesting when one considers the time taken to qualify in the various paths. One would have thought that those studying for longer would have been more prepared for business, but my view has been that this is not the case.
Some of the students that walked the alternative path qualified in a shorter period than the university graduates! In fact some did it in only 4 years!
This is what we found when we investigated the facts...
- You can study finance with a Grade 12 result and can still make it to the top and never go to a university!
- There are numerous paths one can follow to get to the top of your world in finance!
- Some students reach their level of expertise at a NQF level 8 after 7 years following a university route.
- Some learners do not go to a university and reach their NQF level 8 within 4 years!
- Some students who study finance excel where they are governed by rigid sets of rules and conventions!
- Other people prefer the strategic aspects of guiding businesses with their financial knowledge that they have acquired.
- There is no singular path that is better than the next and there are many facets to finance within business!
One thing we have concluded is that when a person is promoting one type of learning to be superior to another,
it is often as a result of their lack of understanding of the diverse nature of the science and what the different philosophies can contribute to a business understadning and to the net results within that business.