Do University Rankings Influence Career Outcomes in the Accounting and Auditing Profession?

The study analysed the impact of university rankings on accounting and auditing graduates’ employability, salary prospects, and professional training prospects in Zimbabwe, focusing on public and private employers, drawing from Human Capital Theory and Signalling Theory. Qualitative methods such as interviews and document analysis were employed to investigate how institutional reputation shaped recruitment prejudices and outcomes. The study sought to enlighten accounting profession educational policy and Zimbabwean employment practice. Among 60 distributed questionnaires, 52 were completed, with a response rate of 86.7%. The results showed a positive significant correlation between graduation from a highly ranked university (e.g., UZ or NUST) and working for elite firms, as 86.2% of the graduates from these institutions found work at firms such as Deloitte and PWC, whereas 39.1% from less-ranked universities found similar employment. Salary data indicated that 72.4% of top-university graduates received between USD 400 and USD 700, and over 69% of lower-ranked university graduates received less than USD 400. Postgraduate training sponsorship too was skewed towards top-university graduates with 65.5% being given further training opportunities compared with 21.7% of their counterparts.The findings statistically validated the study hypotheses and supported Signalling and Human Capital for their theories. Pearson correlation coefficients between career achievement (employment, earnings, and patronage) and university ranking were r = 0.536 to r = 0.642 (p