Factors affecting success in the professional entry exam for accountants in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This paper explores factors that have affected the success of candidates in the professional entry exam conducted by Brazil’s Federal Council of Accounting. We analyse results of 18,948 candidates who sat for the exam in 2012, using a logistic regression model and the key indicators used by government to monitor the performance of higher education institutions (HEIs) and the characteristics of candidates. We find that success is related positively to the quality of the HEIs from which candidates graduated and to a measure of student ability that is used widely in Brazil. We find also that males perform better than females and that younger candidates perform better than older candidates. The geographical region of Brazil within which candidates completed the exam was also significant. The insights provided will help public policy-makers in Brazil, and the Brazilian accounting profession, to understand key factors associated with current low pass rates.

KEYWORDS:

• Professional
• entry
• exam
• Brazil
• accounting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Such as by Eskew and Faley (1988), Nix and Nix (1988), Ashbaugh and Thompson (1993), Davidson (2002), Grant et al. (2002), Raghunandan, Read, and Brown (2003), Bagamery et al. (2005), Allen and Woodland (2006), Boone et al. (2006), Segall et al. (2007), Barilla et al. (2008), Briggs and He (2012), Morgan, Bergin, and Sallee (2012), Gramling and Rosman (2013), Haen et al. (2014), Morgan (2015), Miller and Nouri (2015), and Nouri and Miller (2015).

2 The lato sensu graduate programmes include specialization programmes such as MBA (Master of Business Administration) and are practice-oriented.

3 Other than for medicine where the last year is the sixth.

4 An average mark is obtained using a weighting of 25% for the general exam and 75% for the discipline-specific component.

5 This is evidence of the legalist character of Brazilian accounting, as noted by Rodrigues et al. (2011).

6 The University of São Paulo has had a leading role in accounting education. The first research unit in accounting was also created at this university in 1946 (Peleias et al., 2007; Rodrigues et al., 2012). The pioneering role of the University of São Paulo can still be observed today.

7 Other ways of measuring the ability of individual candidates or groups of candidates include college entrance exam scores and grades (Colbert & Murray, 1998; Grant et al., 2002). These data are not available in Brazil.

8 IBGE, Contas Regionais do Brasil 2013: Produto Interno Bruto, população residente e Produto Interno Bruto per capita, segundo as Grandes Regiões e as Unidades da Federação, http://saladeimprensa.ibge.gov.br/noticias?view=noticia&id=1&busca=1&idnoticia=3038, accessed 19 November 2015.

9 Use of the percentage score that the candidate earned on the exam did not yield better results.

10 We also tested the variable DMAST, a dummy variable assigned a value of 0 if the percentage of faculty holding a master's degree in accounting was <50%, and 1 otherwise. The results of the model were significant but the variable was not significant.

11 We decided to provide information related to region*age and region*gender using only text, and not by providing additional tables. But tables are available upon request to the second author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported financially by the research unit on Governance, Competitiveness and Public Policy (project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006939), through funds provided by COMPETE2020 – Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.