Hey you. Got a little assortment of news here for you.
In this news brief
- The Accounting Job Market Is…Great?
- EY’s AI Avatar Gets Glazed
- 16-Year-Old Accountant Gets National Praise
- Sometimes Disciplinary Matters Work Out in Your Favor
- When Fate Decides You’re Not Gonna Be an Accountant Anymore
- From White Collar to Gig Work
- Big 4 Still Taking a Beating Down Under
- PwC Needs New Signs
- Congrats on the Promotion, Mike
The Accounting Job Market Is…Great?
Axios did a story on accounting enrollment, starting with referencing this April Fortune piece: Meet the Gen Z grads reviving accounting—colleges are reporting near-perfect placement rates at $80K starting salaries
Axios headline: Accounting sees enrollment jump as AI worries spread
Alright, let’s see their brief:
By the numbers: Total U.S. postsecondary accounting enrollment rose to roughly 313,400 students in 2025 — up from 293,800 in 2024, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.
- Meanwhile, fall undergraduate accounting enrollment also climbed for the third straight year.
Zoom in: At UCCS, where accounting is offered as an emphasis area within general business programs, 53 such degrees were granted during the 2024-25 school year, up from 37 the year before.
- Yes, but: Enrollment dipped slightly to 154 this spring from 162 a year earlier, per data shared with Axios.
Better make sure this bit gets in there:
The bottom line: “I have not talked to another accounting person who has a degree in accounting who cannot find a job,” one recent grad told the outlet.
Huh. I normally turn comments off on the news brief but I’ll leave them open this time if anyone would like to share their own experiences and/or any anecdotes on that one.
EY’s AI Avatar Gets Glazed
Forbes discusses Coach Eve, EY’s AI avatar that’s supposed to level the hiring playing field. Let’s get the intro out of the way:
EY has a numbers problem. Nearly 400,000 recent college graduates apply for jobs at the global consulting giant every year. 30,000 are selected for personal interviews. Only 5,000-8,000 are hired.
It’s a large cut. And EY knows they are missing people who could be superb employees. But how do you give that many candidates a fair chance when there is no human-scale way to evaluate each and every one?
For a long time, the honest answer was that you couldn’t. Applicants from the Ivy League and other elite schools showed up at interviews bearing impressive academic resumes. They knew how to run case studies, a critical part of the EY vetting process. And they had inside knowledge that only a well-connected alumni network can offer.
Are we seriously pretending like Big 4 recruits primarily from elite schools? Moving on, we’re here to talk about “the digital face of EY’s recruiting efforts.”
Just a few years ago, a college graduate applying for a job at EY might have received a printed booklet or been directed to a web page that tried to anticipate their questions about EY’s culture and working environment. But those materials would have been incomplete and not at all responsive.
In contrast, Coach Eve is made for interaction. Grounded in EY’s custom knowledge base, Eve leads candidates through practice questions, simulated case studies, and even addresses their concerns about dress code or what EY looks for in a new hire.
In one early test, an intern spent ten minutes asking Coach Eve about the difference between EY’s pension and 401(k). That’s the kind of practical and detailed question a nervous applicant might never ask in an interview. But the answer might also be what convinces a talented person to accept an offer—or apply in the first place. “The psychological safety piece is so important to us,” said [EY Americas Chief Talent and Culture Officer Ginnie] Carlier. “When a student or candidate comes in having had that live interaction [with Coach Eve] the conversation is much more elevated.”
We last mentioned the AI avatar in a November 2024 Monday Morning News Brief when Business Insider did a story on it.
Is it eVe or Eve? Meh who cares.
16-Year-Old Accountant Gets National Praise
A 16 year old is Nigeria’s youngest chartered accountant:
The Minister of Youth Development, Ayodele Olawande, has congratulated Osasere Okundaye on emerging as Nigeria’s youngest chartered accountant at the age of 16.
In a statement on Monday, Olawande described the feat as a remarkable demonstration of hard work, discipline, resilience and commitment to excellence.
“I heartily congratulate Miss Osasere Okundaye on her outstanding achievement of becoming Nigeria’s youngest Chartered Accountant at just 16 years of age.
“This remarkable milestone is a testament to the power of hard work, discipline, resilience, and an unwavering commitment to excellence,” the minister said.
Sometimes Disciplinary Matters Work Out in Your Favor
A firm owner in Australia got his right to practice back after fighting a disciplinary matter that arose from his employee’s conduct:
Following a successful appeal, Auz Taxation owner Sumit Bagga has overturned a finding that he failed to supervise an employee who lodged fraudulent activity statements on behalf of two clients.
The Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) set aside the TPB’s decision to cancel Bagga and his firm’s registrations, and, while it regarded Bagga’s conduct as “ill-considered and certainly inappropriate”, it emphasised that it was not characterised as “fraudulent or carried out in a manner intended to deceive”.
In his 17 June 2025 decision on the TPB’s subsequent appeal, Justice Christopher Horan of the Federal Court of Australia upheld the tribunal’s findings that the termination of Bagga and his firm’s registration was “unwarranted” and that Bagga was a fair and reasonable person, despite the conduct of his employee, Amit Kumar.
Kumar, who had recently arrived in Australia around late 2022, was given access to Bagga and his wife’s GovID as his access had not yet been processed.
In its grounds of appeal, TPB said that the tribunal erred in determining that the termination of registration was unwarranted and that Bagga was a fit and proper person.
When Fate Decides You’re Not Gonna Be an Accountant Anymore
Also from Australia, here’s a heartwarming tale of a former accountant turned artist whose life changed forever after a brain injury.
In a backyard studio, surrounded by plants and birdsong, artist Cheryl Blacklock is bringing to life an abstract image of a young woman’s face.
Eyes brimming with emotion gaze out from the canvas, as Ms Blacklock’s hand moves as if on instinct, a vision clear in her mind.
She lives with an acquired brain injury after surgery for brain aneurysms in 2019 and says art is “like medicine”.
She didn’t leave accounting right away though:
During her recovery from the Acquired Brain Injury (ABI), she noticed things changing.
Her ability to process information was reduced, leading to slower decision-making.
Processing numbers and reading forms had also become difficult.
“One time I emailed a client … and told this man he was getting a $10,000 refund. The next day, I realised he had to pay the $10,000, not [get] a refund,” she said.
Another quote:
“The things that used to come so naturally to me as an accountant … it’s like my brain is going, ‘I can’t do that anymore, I don’t want to do that anymore, I want to do this,'” she said.
Her Insta if you’d like.
From White Collar to Gig Work
This story from Bloomberg discusses a 23-year-old accounting grad from Venezuela, among other immigrants struggling with changes to the Temporary Protected Status program:
For many immigrants, the changes making it harder to live in the US have arrived not as a single dramatic event but as a series of bureaucratic blows. Through a host of regulatory moves, the White House had made employment authorization harder to obtain and increased compliance burdens for employers.
Ken, a 23-year-old accounting graduate from Venezuela, learned that the US government canceled his work permit when he failed a pre-employment background check. Freshly laid off from a $60,000-a-year job as a credit analyst, the new reality arrived as he was hunting for his next gig. He had been living and working in the US since 2024 under TPS, but the car lot where he hoped to work as a salesman said he was flagged as ineligible.
Ken now struggles to make ends meet delivering food. He left his home in Texas to split rent with his sister in Wisconsin.
Big 4 Still Taking a Beating Down Under
Financial Review columnists and guest columnists are still ragging on Big 4. Here’s Matt Rowley, communications expert, with One bad apple? The big four consulting firms face a reckoning
KPMG’s crisis looks like a story about one firm’s resignations and investigations. The real story is the collective trust the whole profession has spent, and a government now deciding how much of the sector’s freedom to take back. There are rules for winning that trust back, and most of the big four are breaking them.
To date, the focus on the fallout from the KPMG auditing crisis has been on the senior resignations, client and staff defections, and impending investigations raining down on the firm.
At play, however, is a far greater sector-wide collective prize that the big four auditors have all had a hand in putting at risk. That prize is the sector’s collective “public licence”, the standing with regulators and government that has let the profession largely govern itself rather than be governed. It’s worth understanding how this has come about, and what can be done about it because a similar fate awaits more Australian industries in the coming years.
He goes on to list specific issues: Deloitte using AI in a report the government paid for, EY’s culture issues that were under heavy scrutiny after an auditor was found dead at the Sydney office in 2023, and of course the PwC tax scandal.
PwC Needs New Signs
Across the pond, PwC is starting to take steps to change signage after a logo change last year.
The company has applied for advertising content to replace the signage at the top of the landmark One City Park building with signage incorporating the business’ new logo.
The butterfly shaped logo next to the PwC branding will be replaced by two orange bars.
Earlier:
Much, much earlier:
Congrats on the Promotion, Mike
This guy’s promotion made the local news in Pennsylvania. I love articles like this, hyperlocal news like this is a dying art form.
Mike Gutowski, 29, of West Avoca, son of Babe Gutowski and the late Jeanne Gutowski, has been promoted to Specialist, Risk and Compliance Services at Deloitte LLP.
Deloitte is the largest professional services network in the world by revenue and one of the Big Four firms.
Congrats, Mike!
OK that’s it for this news brief. Email or text if you have a story or tip, we’re here. Have a good one!