Just to confirm, they won’t count my MBA toward the experience, right? I have to have 4 years in the office to get the charter? Not fair IMO. -Lurker
What part about that isn’t fair? CFAI doesn’t want a bunch of people with ZERO real word experience walking around with charters.
because some dude pushing a pencil around in some crap job for four years may not be learning the same things that we put up with on a day-to-day basis in b-school. Think about it. -Lurker
The real world is completely different from the academic world. Also, pencil pushing in a crap job doesn’t qualify for the 4 years either.
McLeod81 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The real world is completely different from the > academic world. Also, pencil pushing in a crap > job doesn’t qualify for the 4 years either. Totally agree. There is no substitute for real work experience.
This is something that I have always wondered about. I know people working in IT positions (which utter the odd financial term every blue moon) with full charters. I have been told that it is very subjective, and as long as you work in a fairly big finance company you can glamorise any job within that company (even 0% finance jobs like I have seen in numerous occasions from coleagues) to get the full charter as soon as they have been four years there and straight from university.
Forum Lurker Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > because some dude pushing a pencil around in some > crap job for four years may not be learning the > same things that we put up with on a day-to-day > basis in b-school. Think about it. > > -Lurker Theres no substitute for real world experience, I got my MBA and while its great experience it doesn’t prepare you for the business world. I’ve learned more from six months in the business world than I ever learned from b-school, CFA, etc…
You are all nuts. Let me give you a scenario (not mine) of a hypothetical person who would not be eligible: Say a guy went and got a B.S. in Finance from Harvard and was valedictorian. Then he does 3 years at a top firm doing something like I-banking. He then proceeds onto the Wharton school for an MBA. He takes the CFA on his 27th birthday (because he graduated from college at 22, then did 3 in real world and 2 in b-school. This guy: No soup for you! Another guy: Some job that is investment related but is a dime a dozen. Like I said, pencil pushing can sometimes get you through as described in the post. He graduates from college at 22 and has the CFA at 26 after pushing that pencil for four years. This guy: Welcome to the club!!!
Ok. So your HBS guy has to work 1 more year before he can get the charter… big f_ ing deal. It shouldn’t be hard for him to get a job in finance anyways right? This hypothetical person should suck it up, get a job, and put in his 4 years of work like EVERYONE else. Just because some a$$hole went to harvard doesn’t mean he’s any better at managing money or whatever. And where do you draw the line as far as university experience goes? Does someone who got their MBA at harvard get a free pass, but someone who went to Kansas State (or wherever) get rejected? What about U. Phoenix online MBA grads? CFAI is supposedly making it harder to sneak past with sh!tty work experience (which they should), but there is absolutely no way that they could open the door for every 23 year old with an MBA and a 4 years of “experience” studying financial THEORY at college. If they did, the flood gates would be WIDE open, and the CFA would become practically meaningless.
I hate the “big f-ing deal argument” that people give for someone being screwed. That’s the same line of crap I hear from liberals justifying soaking the “rich.” You know the routine: “They’re already making $X a year. What’s a little inconvenience when it comes to paying their ‘fair share’ to the tax collector?” Yeah, they can deal with it, but it doesn’t make it morally justifiable. I’m still trying to figure out how his 3 years doing I-banking and his obvious credentials is somehow inferior to 4 years doing a pencil pushing gig for the latter guy. This scenario just straight up isn’t fair. Hell, maybe Mr. HBS goes for the 3-peat and pursues a Ph.D. Still gonna leave him out? I already said that I didn’t do HBS and have no Ivy League pedigree myself. I went to State U and went to a top 30 MBA program, so I’m not blindly playing the Ivy elitism card. In fact, I’ve seen plenty of overrated people come out of the Ivy League with some geniuses that came out of State U. But the CFAI should still account for the very practical things learned in business school. You can’t just throw it out. What do you think we were doing there? Playing checkers? You think they didn’t teach us how to build models and have a deep breadth of knowledge about the capital markets? Somebody come on here and agree with me for crying out loud!
> This guy: No soup for you! I guess life is sometimes really unfair to Harvard and Wharton kids.
Work experience is work experience not school experience.
It’s not a matter of fairness. The CFAI isn’t here to decide what is fair and what isn’t fair. They have set forth rules for the program, which everyone knows before they sign up. If someone doesn’t like the rules because they aren’t “fair”, CFAI isn’t forcing anyone to take the tests or get the charter. There is no quality control for graduate education. CFAI has no way of evaluating the quality of someone’s education. There are about 20 different MBA programs in the state of WI (where I am from). Some of them are of a very high quality, but the majority are not. I graduated with MS in Finance from a decent state school and learned an incredible amount from the program, but there were many others in the same program who clearly were clueless. Many of these schools have little to no admission requirements, and getting the MBA is just a matter of sitting through some classes and taking a few tests. IF the CFAI started accepting MBA time as work experience, they would have to accept that same experience for all Universities (good and bad). It is not CFAI’s job to play games and make exceptions for people who don’t like the rules. These are rules that have been in place since day one, and the rules need to be concrete. If anything, CFAI should crack down even harder on the work experience requirement.
The work experience requirement is all that elevates CFA Charterholders above the status of “some guy who passed a few tests”.
Alright. You win. Three years @ 90 hours a week doing I-banking at Goldman Sachs clearly justifies someone who should wait it out while 4 years doing 40 hours a week of quasi-back office anywhere gets the designation. That’s sensible. Countless sleepless nights burning the midnight oil and you’re going to hold it against him. Let me try another angle. Two firemen. Fireman #1–Works in the busiest fire department in the country. A wave of arson has gripped the city for 3 years and he was always on a job. He’s seen it all: buildings, homes, everything. In fact, he even put in a couple years at Firevard, the best fire college around. Fireman #2–Four years at another fire department. Welcome aboard #2!!! I must be in the Twilight Zone.
MBA doesn’t count for s h i t because it’s not work experience. Deal with it. It’s also worth noting that B-school is a joke and MBA programs are generally very easy to complete.
Rod Serling lives!
Only a loser would think that an MBA should count as experience. You have a lot to learn. With that attitude, you are going to start a job thinking you are a pro when you are pretty clueless. Young inexperienced people like you need to use your ears more than your mouth.
Rick, Thanks for judging me, man. I’m happy to hear that you think that I think that I am a pro because I’m so clueless. In actuality I’m as humble as can be. I don’t believe I’m king of the world, just a regular dude try to move up in the business and pay the bills. Maybe I can learn something from other 20-somethings that have booked up their four years of experience. It doesn’t matter that that experience may have been second rate. All that matters is reporting to duty for four years. Afterall, once you hit four years, you are able to strip away the shackles of cluelessness, for that is when you officially have a clue. Since I’m so clueless, I can’t wait! You guys can keep mouthing off. I think I’ll get on the phone with all of my former classmates and let them know that their education was worthless. Oops, there’s that bachelor’s degree requirement courtesy of the CFAI. The institute doesn’t seem to think the bachelor’s was worthless. Apparently that one is okay but the master’s is a major no no. Sorry, I didn’t get the memo. And therein lies the the hole in your argument. I’m done with this thread.
Lets all hug it out