The Rishon LeZion auditorium at UTime College, where Jonathan Frumkin teaches accounting course students twice a week, resembles a desk at a high-tech company.
“Yonatan, you have 100% attendance. What a miracle! After all, most of your students combine study with work.”
“You're right. But almost all of them work outside of their specialty.”
Jonathan is tactfully silent about the earnings of his students, although it is not difficult to guess: in the sales area of a ready-made clothing store - even the coolest one - the salesperson is paid the minimum. But an accountant earns much more!..
Jonathan has taught accounting at Israeli colleges for thirty-one years. He made his Aliyah 33 years ago from (then still) Leningrad.
“We call our city Leningrad not because we love Lenin, but because it became St. Petersburg after we left,” says Jonathan, a graduate of the Voznesensky Leningrad Financial-Economic Institute.
“Your Hebrew is perfect”.
“Thank you, I’m flattered,” Jonathan smiles. “The main thing is perseverance. I studied Hebrew a lot. Abilities probably also played a role. At school, English was easy for me”.
“You teach accounting, which is basically a boring profession."
“It depends...” Yonatan retorts. “Firstly, accounting is the most sought-after profession. Any business - tiny or large, global or local - cannot function without an accountant. It means, almost everyone who graduated from this course already has a job.”
“How do you keep your students interested”?
“Each teacher has his own approach”, says Jonathan. “I use to tell my students how accountants worked many years ago, when there were no computers and all calculations were carried out using a calculator. I was the chief accountant of one of the divisions of the Leningrad Metro. All bookkeeping was done by hand! And my deputy actually worked on an abacus! But times have changed. Nowadays it would never even occur to anyone to portray an accountant in armbands and with abacus. Especially when it comes to Israeli accountants. Perhaps studying the history of Ancient Greece or the history of world theater is more interesting than learning accounting, but for some reason I don’t know any new immigrants who succeeded to find a really good job in Israel in these brunches.”
“Here, even freelancers who work on their own have to hire an accountant, right?”
“The services of accountants in Israel are decently paid,” clarifies Yonatan Frumkin. “Especially the services of experienced accountants with an impeccable reputation. I usually warn my students, especially young ones: at first large companies will not want to hire you, because they are looking for highly experienced specialists and examine every CV almost under a microscope. But those who enjoy now the reputation of experienced accountants also got their first job 10-15 years ago. And at first, their salaries were probably lower than the earnings of highly experienced colleagues. But a year or two passed and the situation changed. Because you can develop and grow endlessly in this sphere. So, the majority of our graduates continue to master the most advanced computer programs used in accounting and are rapidly moving forward. When an accountant has mastered all the professional tools, there is no end to the number of clients."
According to Yonatan Frumkin, over the past 30 years, specialists from various industries have mastered a new profession with him.
“Music teachers, engineers, philologists...” he says. “All of them, without exception, are at work. They work as accountants. They are doing well! The main thing is that our graduates are not only well-established, but also very happy with life: many manage accounting for several businesses at once, others have opened their own companies and serve dozens of clients.”
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