Shall we discuss something specific and relevant, in an objective and constructive way? Infinity mentioned stuff on FB so I went and had a look:
https://www.facebook.com/Actuarial/...78259466480/10155409891296481/?type=3&theater
It got me thinking about two main areas:
The comments made on FB in response to the post interested me. I initially got the impression that the IFoA were trying to highlight what a challenge it is to become an actuary because the numbers look big to me. Not quite sure of the merits of that aim - could argue it would be better to publicise how achievable it is - but that's not what interested me. If we assume the numbers are all correct then I presume they are based on a fairly large dataset. People seem to be questioning them (despite being published using words like "around" and "normally") due to their own experiences or the experiences of a few people they know. I know someone who took 16 years to qualify - but that doesn't make me question the fact that the average (and the normal) is a lot lower than this. Similarly, no doubt some have used more than 1500 hours to get there, but I bet there are loads who have used less. Many people won't use 400 hours to get through CA1, despite being huge.
Even if the IFoA have underestimated the numbers as some of the comments imply - then it doesn't really matter if the overall objective was to show what a challenge it was - as that comes across anyway. Whether it had stated 6.5 years or 8 years probably doesn't matter to most.
My other thoughts concerned the numbers themselves. The numbers are obviously trying to refer to reaching Associateship - part of their agenda of promoting this as the primary qualification, for which i think they will continue to struggle with. I thought they always used to quote 5-6 years for reaching Fellowship, and so 6.5 years for Associateship sounds too long to me - unless it's some 75% percentile or something rather than an average. Actuaries are always going to question things like this.
I don't know what this statement means "only half of our students qualify each year - on average". Any ideas?
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