CA V/S MBA

A Brief

CA

CA i.e Chartered Accountant is a professional course in India regulated and administered by Institute of Chartered Accountants of India which is setup by an Act of Parliament in India and is the sole certification body for CA. A Chartered Accountant is basically equipped with knowledge of Taxation in India, Costing, Indian Company Laws, Other Corporate Laws, Financial Management, Financial Reporting and other matters during his study. This course is regarded as one of the toughest course over the world.

MBA

MBA i.e Masters of Business Administration is a post graduation degree focused on business administration. MBA have different specialization categories in it like Finance, Operations, Marketing, Human Resources, Accounting , Economics and others.

DIFFERENCES

Degree of Toughness

CA is regarded as one of the toughest course over the world with CA final passing percentage ranging between 10 - 20% in recent years which earlier was around 2-5 % for final level. On the other MBA has passing percentage of around 80-90%, but the catch here is that if one wants to get admission in IIMA most successful institution for MBA in India which obviously have limited seats of around 5000 to 5500 and getting that is a dream for many MBA students the competition is tough. In 2023 around 2.88 lakhs students gave exam for CAT i.e the entrance exam for MBA while there were limited seats of 5000-5500 for MBA, the percentage is around 1.7 for MBA in IIMA.

Time Period

CA requires a time frame of around 4.5 years after 12th if you pass everything in first attempt, the chances for which are around 1% as per statistics.

While MBA is a 2 year Post graduation degree. But here the main catch is that for MBA you have to mandatorily complete graduation which is not a condition for CA and completing CA is considered a passed graduation for all government jobs. Also, one can parallel do Graduation along with CA which is not possible for MBA. Hence overall time for CA and MBA are roughly same or for MBA it is 6 months more i.e 5 years.

Cost of Course

Since there is no college for CA, it can be done by way of self study or by taking private coaching and the cost of course will depend on that. Considering all the registration fees along with all trainings and examination fees it is total between 1 lakh to 1.2 lakh and if you add on coaching it will be 3 to 6 lakh depending upon the coaching fees. As compared to CA, MBA is quite expensive, IIM Ahmedabad has a fees of about 20 to 40 lakhs depending upon course and hostel facility. While on average fees ranges between 5 lakhs to 40 lakhs for the whole course. There is no exact amount that can be quoted because fees for MBA depend on every college internal policies while in CA it is determined solely by one institute that is ICAI.

Learning, Skills and Knowledge acquired

CA degree mainly equips its doers with a vast knowledge in field of Accountancy, Taxation, Costing, Economics, Financial Management, Auditing and many others related fields. This course also has a training period of 2 years( which was earlier 3 years) in which students get the practical experience for their theoretical studies. Hence it is a combination of both theoretical knowledge and practical experience. While in MBA the knowledge depends upon the field in which they are getting specialization. So if a person is getting specialization in finance he will know about finances. There are many training sessions in MBA course which equips MBA pupils with Presentational and leadership skills. So on an average a MBA Personnel have better presentational and leadership skills than a CA, while CA's on an average outperforms a MBA in knowledge.

Career Perspectives

A CA Professional gets a professional certification with his course completion. He becomes legally allowed to practice as a CA Professional, hence he can open a practice firm. But in initial years it is difficult to gets clients or work, so survival is difficult for most in initial years. While an established Practitioner earns around 20-12 lpa on an average. While on job front, If looked on a broad perspective on average a CA earns 10-12 lpa ( google data) in India while an average MBA guy earns around 7.93 lakhs (data is on the basis of survey conducted on 11,345 MBA Jobbers). Also, as a career beginner a CA campus placement had an average CTC of around 13.12 LPA in Feb-March 24 drive and for MBA highest average was from IIM Bangalore i.e 35.31 lpa while lowest was from IIM Sirmaur which was 14.45 lpa. If we consider Non IIM the average is opening placement is placed at an average of 4.5-5.5 lakhs. For CA the campus placement percentage is around 43.5 % for total students registered for Campus. The placement percentage is around more than 90 % for majority and some of them have even 100.0% placement result.

For Non IIM average is around 60-70 % these records are for college providing placement in their Campus.( Not including those who do not have direct placement for their students)

Conclusion

CA and MBA both are having a lot of future in them, what you should choose depend upon your case, if want economical it is CA and if you can afford, it is both CA and MBA i.e it is your choice. But for CA if you do not want to waste time, you should consider your abilities for doing it in one go, because in CA it is easy to get enter but it is very difficult to get out of it. While case is opposite for MBA, i.e entrance is difficult in IIM or other big name college but exit is smooth.

Also if you choose to do practice obviously you have to go with CA. In knowledge way as above mentioned CA outperforms so you would definitely get more of it in CA while leadership and presentation skills are soul of MBA's. Also in MBA what specialization you chose determines your Career potential that it develops, so that should also be chosen wisely.

Comment your suggestion for any missings.