By Grace Chua

THE first batch of 45 National University of Singapore (NUS) accountancy graduates in two decades have all found jobs - doing so before they received their degree scrolls yesterday.

They secured these jobs following internship with companies, a requirement of the programme they were on.

The NUS programme, which began in 2006, is actually business administration with an accounting specialisation.

The programme exposed them to business modules such as finance, consulting and management, as well as accounting.

NUS relinquished its original accountancy programme in 1987 to the then Nanyang Technological Institute.

Its intake for its revamped accountancy course, at under 200 students a year, is smaller than those at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Singapore Management University (SMU).

NTU's programme was reported in 2006 to have 600 students, while SMU takes in 200 a year.

National dragonboater Sarah Ching, 23, chose the NUS accountancy programme because she wanted to pursue dragonboating during her time on campus and also because she wanted to do a professional degree.

But being in the pioneer batch of students was a gamble.

'When I started, the accountancy programme was not accredited with the Acra yet,' she said.

Acra is the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, the corporate regulatory body in Singapore.

The NUS programme's accreditation last year means its graduates can be registered as public accountants after three years of work experience.

Yesterday, about 880 students graduated from the NUS Business School's various degree programmes, such as Master of Business Administration and the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA). Two ceremonies were held.

Of the 530 BBA graduates from NUS, excluding those who specialised in accountancy, two-thirds had secured jobs by the time they graduated, down from 80 per cent two years ago.

A Straits Times poll in March among 300 final-year business/finance students from across the three universities found that accountancy students seem to have an easier time landing jobs, even in a recession.

It was reported that this is because the turnover rate is very high among accountants, especially in the first two to three years, leaving vacancies in the field.

At the graduation ceremony for BBA students yesterday afternoon, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister for Finance and Transport Lim Hwee Hua emphasised the value of a university education and spoke on the need to adapt to changes in the working world.

'Careers will not always proceed according to plan... You will not only need to learn to seize opportunities as they present themselves, but also need to be proactive in creating them,' she said.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.