I'm a university student studying an L.L.B./B.Com, also working as a trainee accountant in a chartered firm. One of the most frustrating things about doing this is that, in the latter years of the Commerce degree a big proportion of students are working in industry. Even so, there's basically very little interaction between the University and firms in the industry. Courses are structured with little relevence to work. An example - Audit and Tax are both 3rd year courses, although these are the first things a trainee accountant does when they start work. They sail through the courses when they do them, but they aren't learning the subject matter when they need it. Are there any other part-timers out there? Is this problem common? Venting complete.
It seems like underpreparation on one side and overkill on the other. In truth, I have no idea about this. However, here's an interesting fact! Before I finally decided to go into education - something I had always talked about doing - I was considering going into forensic accounting! I worked as a relocation accountant for a few years. I just loved busting people trying to cheat their own companies!
I'm an accounting graduate, but I ran into the same problem when I was in school. The university has it's structured program, but the company just wants a cheap workhorse. They don't really care what you know or what you don't. They just want to pay you as little as possible to produce semi-truthful results. Gotta love accounting! Don't have the solution, just thought I'd tell you you're not alone.