The theme of this month’s issue is creativity, and I was presented with the proposition that those of us trained as pen pushers lack the necessary skills to add to the creativity pool of society.

Now in part this is true. But it is not the fault of our occupations, but of how we think – and how we think is, for a while, guided by how we are taught to think or taught not to think as applicable.

Universities have become enormous factories in the last 25 years. Auckland University on its own has a student roll equal to the population of a large town, around 40 per cent of the population of Hamilton are enrolled at Auckland University.

They have also become big businesses. Their funding from government is based on enrolments, and comes from a mixture of central funding and the proceeds of course fees funded in part from student loans and foreign fee-paying students.

Thus universities compete for student numbers, and this in part is soft competition based on international reputation – that is, the respect of the bit of paper that comes out at the end, and in part it is the cost of obtaining the bit of paper. From a student’s perspective, the cost is the fees per paper multiplied by the number of times you have to sit the paper to pass it. Thus there is a commercial imperative to pass marginal students.

25 years ago the number of students coming out of universities were around a third of what they are now, and our population is about 25 per cent higher now. I suspect we are no brighter or gifted than we were 25 years ago in terms of our DNA, so the huge increase in output must be volume over quality. Attend some graduations and listen to what some of these students get doctorates for.

So generalisations that anyone is more creative than someone else is just nonsense as the pools of accountants, lawyers, engineers and scientists have been swollen by large volumes of factory-produced waste, and just as it has always been, you have to judge the quality of the individual for themselves not on the pieces of paper they carry around.

In my experience the more letters after someone’s name that appear on their business card, the more inferior the bearer. Once you have your admission into the race and have the opportunity to prove yourself on your merits, any further bits of paper after that are a waste of time. This is not to say you should not strive for knowledge, but knowledge comes from many sources.

For students to operate in a factory environment they have to respond like factory units thus they have to do what they are told and thinking is systemically knocked out of them, at least at the undergraduate level.

Once they get into the real world, sadly for many it is still a factory environment.

But regardless of the factory accounting firms that produce more factory accountants, to suggest that accountants can’t create is manifestly nonsense. Just look at Sam Morgan. He took a job in a major accounting firm, had some brains, and got out fast and created Trademe. Creation is about imagination, the ability to think, and conceptualise and then working out how to turn the imagination through intelligence and effort into something real. Often this is a team effort and the thoughts of many are better than the thoughts of one.

I have met a number of accountants and lawyers whose ability to think creatively about things outside of their core discipline is astounding and they can then bridge the gap between the concept and the vision and the practical reality of executing a business with the flair of the inventor.

So I say again, judge the quality of the individual based on what you experience of them and forget the labels they are given for the convenience of the stupid. The old saying of “don’t judge the book by its cover” is as true as it has ever been.