SMU Accountancy vs SUTD ISTD

[peacepenguin]

Hi all,

I have been offered a placing in SUTD and Accountancy in SMU. For SUTD, you only declare your major in second year with ISTD being the most popular as it is more or less computer science/engineering.

Personally, I would like a stable career and a healthy amount of work-life balance. I heard that accountants are going to be replaced by AI and there is a hype for the computing field now.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance

Hi,

Congrats!

Hmm theres a misconception on what segments of accounting that AI will replace in the future. Commonly, the bookkeeping part is rather procedural and most likely to be replaced. But if you're talking about audit/tax, then a large part of the job still requires the accountants judgement which is rather hard to for AI to do.

Anw, accounting is merely one of the career paths you can pursue with a BAcc. Theres quite a number of other paths (i.e. consulting, banking, etc) which you can follow depending on your passion as you discover it during your uni days.

Ehhh but I guess it more of following what interests you? Dont simply do an IS degree because theres a hype now, you might not like it at the eod.

SMU degree allows you to have a second major also. From there you can branch out to take an IS major if you are truly keen. If i'm not wrong, SMU BAcc also recently launch an analytics track which is rather interesting and has some elements of IS in it as well.

Hope this helps.

[peacepenguin]

Thank you so much for the info! Seems like you are in accountancy or SMU? Hopefully introverts dont get too disadvantaged in SMU

I will say SMU. More established and better recognition.

SUTD still has some way to go.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hi,

Hmm theres a misconception on what segments of accounting that AI will replace in the future. Commonly, the bookkeeping part is rather procedural and most likely to be replaced. But if you're talking about audit/tax, then a large part of the job still requires the accountants judgement which is rather hard to for AI to do.

True that transactional roles will be largely replaced by AI in the future. However, that's only part of the story. Many sub specialties like audit and tax are under severe pressure from business process offshoring. While the jobs will still be there, more & more will slowly migrate into captive offshoring hubs like India, Philippines, China and Malaysia.

In fact, may global large MNCs including the Big 4 who have enough scale and leverage, are beginning to put tax advisory (direct & indirect), audit (financial, quality & IT), controlling and some even more advanced finance modelling & data analytics roles into such hubs. If this consolidation trend continues, it is only a matter of time before the medium & smaller MNCs and SMEs follow suit.

As a recruiter specializing in corporate finance roles, I think the BPO upskilling & migration trend is far more disruptive than AI which IMO is mostly just media hype.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

True that transactional roles will be largely replaced by AI in the future. However, that's only part of the story. Many sub specialties like audit and tax are under severe pressure from business process offshoring. While the jobs will still be there, more & more will slowly migrate into captive offshoring hubs like India, Philippines, China and Malaysia.

In fact, may global large MNCs including the Big 4 who have enough scale and leverage, are beginning to put tax advisory (direct & indirect), audit (financial, quality & IT), controlling and some even more advanced finance modelling & data analytics roles into such hubs. If this consolidation trend continues, it is only a matter of time before the medium & smaller MNCs and SMEs follow suit.

As a recruiter specializing in corporate finance roles, I think the BPO upskilling & migration trend is far more disruptive than AI which IMO is mostly just media hype.

Same as my co. We used to have a big 15+ pax Finance and Accounting team here in sg RHQ office. Now most of them transfer to Chennai and only 2 very senior level business partner and 1 junior coordinator supporting them left here.