UW-Eau Claire Great Britain Research Trip

The last few days have been full of interviews, travel, and some more sightseeing. Wednesday we headed to our first professor interview at Worcester University which is roughly 2.5 hours out of London by train. It was really interesting to hear more about how different the UK college system works for accounting compared to our own. The university did not actually have a comprehensive accounting major until 3 years ago when a need finally arose beyond its more simple pathways program. Students also only spend 3 years at the university prior to entering their career and classes are not so individual like ours as they are in 15 credit blocks. After the meeting we were given a tour of the university which occupies several buildings in the city including the old hospital. Afterwards we walked the river and checked out some of the architecture which included a cathedral built in the 1750’s. For such a small/medium sized town we were amazed at how large it was and how intricate the interior was.

Yesterday we were back in London to interview at EY. Prior to the interview we went to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. Our interviewee had such a diverse background. She is an Australian native who served on the Australian standards setting board, spent 30 years at EY, served 6 years on the IFRS interpretations committee (IFRIC), and wrote a textbook. She had an abundance of information from her role overseeing the global IFRS committee for the firm. The EY office is in a great location to as you can see Big Ben in the background of our picture. Later in the evening we met up with a UWEC alumnus on a 3 year assignment in the UK with Deloitte for dinner. It was cool to hear about how he got the opportunity to come here, how the process worked, his expectations, and just what living here for the last year was like.

Today we had 3 more interviews at KPMG but at a different office. It was definitely more challenging to track all the information with back-to-back-to-back interviews as opposed to our single interviews all week. The three partners came from rather different areas including quality and risk management, banking, and consulting and change management. All were rather involved in the IFRS transition and other roles including consulting, support management, and working on the IASB.

Tonight we are meeting up with another UWEC alumnus for dinner, possibly some more sightseeing, and then packing for our weekend trip to Snailwell. Hopefully the weather is nice this weekend so we can enjoy some more outdoor activities and a break in the interviews before we hit the busy stretch next week!