Value of the CFA

With the recent proliferation of posts regarding the benefits of the CFA charter, I’m wondering if a devil’s advocate approach is indicated. Does anyone here think that some individuals might choose to discourage potential candidates in order to keep the number of charterholders low? It is not that hard to write a post which sounds authentic. I have never met anyone in any realm of finance, charterholder or not, who says that the CFA designation is anything short of elite.

They’re most likely trolls.

It sort of reminds me of long-term residents of Boulder CO discouraging people from moving there.

It depends what you expect from it. Experience is many times more important in the employer’s eyes.

From what I’ve inferred, it seems when you don’t have much experience, the marginal benefit of the CFA is much higher than when you have many years of experience…

clearly you haven’t talked to a lot of people

In a way, I can see where the trolls are coming from. On June 1st they were probably intimidaded by the sheer number of younger candidates, which they may see as potential competition in the years to come. There’s also another factor at play: while I don’t think that the absolute value of the CFA charter diminishes as more people pursue the program, I do believe that its relative value does. Same thing happened to MBA degrees a few years back. There’s such an oversaturation of MBAs these days, that they now go after jobs for which a B.Comm would have sufficed in the past.

Anyway, and sort of unrelated, I came across this article the day before I wrote the exam: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-31/cfa-june-exam-enrollment-falls-first-time-since-2005.html. Interesting stuff.

Interesting–thanks for the link. I’m looking for something a little different from potentially having the Charter relative to most on this board but you have to respect the time and effort it will take to fully pass the curriculum. That is an intriguing stat about the June numbers. I am sure it has CFAI attention.