Q: What should I study after BCom? Should I opt for CA or MBA?

— Jitin Chawla

A: Both CA and MBA are complete stand-alone professional courses. However, MBA has a more general outlook and grooms you for a large number of managerial jobs in the corporate sector in finance as well as other areas like marketing, HR and systems.

Chartered accountancy is essentially a finance-centric course that empowers you to certify all accounts, including the balance sheet of an organisation. It also gives you a better grasp of financial statements along with an extensive knowledge of tax laws, management accounting and corporate laws.

Chartered accountancy as a profession is attracting a lot of young people and witnessing rapid growth, thanks to the growing corporate sector. Chartered accountants usually occupy high posts. They are the ones responsible for handling accounts and financial matters, dealing with money management, preparing, analysing and auditing accounts along with providing financial advice.

The previous CA curriculum was considered to be lacking in inputs on other aspects of management and business. Hopefully, the revised course has filled in the gaps. On completion of articleship, students need to undergo a compulsory course in general management and communication skills before they can apply for membership of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

You can always do MBA down the line after graduation, preferably after acquiring a year or two of work experience.

Move off the beaten track

Q: I wish to appear for the Special Class Railway Apprentices examination. Can you tell me what the eligibility criteria are?

— Farida Beg

A: The Special Class Railway Apprentices examination is conducted by the Union Public Service Commission for recruiting officers to the Indian Railway Service. The eligibility is Plus Two with physics, chemistry and maths. The age requirement is 17-21 years.

Upon selection, you will be sent for apprenticeship to the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineers, Jamalpur. After completion of your stint as probationer, you will be appointed as assistant mechanical engineer.

Make the right impression

Q: Could you tell me the scope of media management?

— Mita Dasgupta

A: Media management or communications management covers areas such as account planning, brand management, media planning and market research.

A programme in media management will provide students with knowledge and understanding of the multidisciplinary field of media management, encompassing media technology and its basic components as well as market studies, business development, organisation and economics.

The programme helps students enhance their ability to understand the changing media environment and analyse the technological, organisational, audience and business environment for creating more effective, efficient and knowledgeable managers.

The goal of studying media management is to build a bridge between the general discipline of management and the specificities of the media industry and media organisations. As a media manager, you would require to develop a solid understanding of the structure of media, its regulation, its impact on the audience and of the forces shaping the communication revolution.

Media management incorporates media economics (studying the structure of sectors and markets and the deployment of resources, particularly financial ones, to meet the needs of audiences, advertisers, and society), political economy (political economists are interested in the structure of the media industry from the perspective of regulatory and policy issues), media studies (this is a relatively new cross-disciplinary field that applies concepts from sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, psychology, art theory, information theory and economics to analyse the output of media organisations as a means of understanding society, its value system and the cultural discourses at play) and, of course, mass communication and journalism (the nature of media content and how it is processed and delivered to audiences is the focus of this discipline).