At SBA Canada, we believe that vocational training should be focused on the needs of smaller businesses And it is employers, not post-secondary institutions, that should provide that training.
About a year ago we looked at the curriculum for a Bachelor of Business Administration, with a major in accounting at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. From our perspective, at least 24 of the 39 courses had no relevance to the work that most accounting practitioners do.
Those 24 courses were not only irrelevant, but they were also probably beyond the capabilities of the instructors teaching the courses. What’s more the courses involving technology were inevitably at least ten years or more passed their ‘best before date’.
Statistics Canada defines a large business as having 500 employees. This is a rarefied group. In 2018 the largest three thousand businesses had an average of just 493 employees.
In 2020 we formed the SMALL BUSINESS ANALYSTS SOCIETY OF CANADA with the goal of developing and providing relevant training for accounting technicians in Canada. After years of frustration, it had become clear that vocational training in our occupation served the self-interest of our largest professional firms, the 13 regulatory bodies across the country, and the universities that were outsourced to meet the needs of their clients – and themselves.
We believe that curricula need to be shaped by skilled practitioners in our own discipline and reinforced by on-the-job training. Vocational training should meet the real needs of our small business clients, and the practitioners that serve them.
