Abstract
South Africa has a shortage of black (African and coloured) chartered accountants. The Thuthuka Project, initiated by the South African Institute for Chartered Accountants (SAICA), aims to increase the number of black accounting students. The Thuthuka Project includes funding, as well as a comprehensive support programme, for black students to study BCom Accounting (or equivalent) at a SAICA-accredited university. This article reports on research into the factors that promote and hinder the academic success of Thuthuka students. The findings of this study might help other students to achieve success and may assist in the transformation of the chartered accountancy profession. A questionnaire was used to gather data on the perceived success factors of Thuthuka students (from all the SAICA-accredited universities in South Africa). It was found that Thuthuka students believed that support was the main factor contributing to their success, followed by individual commitment.
Highlights
The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) views effective transformation and growth of the chartered accountancy profession as crucial and has made a strategic commitment to develop and empower previously disadvantaged South Africans (SAICA, 2011a)
The studies of Sadler and Erasmus (2005) and Kraft (1991) on the success factors of black students showed that individual commitment was the main factor contributing to their success
Contrary to other studies of accounting students that found that support was not the main success factor (Fraser & Killen, 2003; Du Plessis et al, 2007; Steenkamp et al, 2009; Sadler & Erasmus, 2005; Kraft, 1991), this study highlighted the importance of support for Thuthuka students
Summary
South Africa remains in need of black chartered accountants (CAs) (Sadler & Erasmus, 2005). Chantyl Mulder, SAICA’s senior executive for transformation and growth, announced that the efforts of SAICA and the profession to increase the number of black chartered accountants are starting to bear fruit (SAICA, 2009). Despite the change in racial demographics, in December 2011 only 3 059 of the 33 167 CAs in South Africa were black (African and coloured) (SAICA, 2011b). The Thuthuka Upliftment Project consists of a number of education- and community-related programmes on secondary (school) level, tertiary level and post-education level (Selebi, 2007). Its purpose is to place between 250 and 300 full-bursary African and coloured students at selected SAICA-accredited universities on special undergraduate BCom Accounting (or equivalent) education programmes annually (to increase the number of registered African and coloured university students) (SAICA, 2012b). The Thuthuka Bursary Fund offers a bursary for three years for full-time undergraduate students, as well as a bursary for one year for postgraduate students (Selebi, 2007) who are studying towards becoming CAs
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