In a LinkedIn post published yesterday, Dr Hunt – a former financial adviser now teaching financial planning at Griffith Business School – argued that universities need to pivot to a model of “curation” akin to art galleries or museums, whereby they would source the best professionals and experts to teach students.
“Looking at university courses now, almost none are taught by the actual expert in the topic,” Dr Hunt wrote.
“Few academics devote themselves to the entire breadth of content…Rather, research is more niche, more focussed, more nuanced than what is reflected in the content of university courses, by and large.”
This traditional model of courses being taught by professional researchers and academics no longer fits the type of education increasingly being sought by consumers and employers, she argued.
While some universities do allow ‘guest lectures’, these are often considered an “addition to the course material” rather than of core importance, despite being a “highlight” in the eyes of many students, the former adviser wrote.
“The future of universities…may be to approach course design as less about teaching, and more about selecting, presenting and organising the right experts,” Dr Hunt suggested.
“It is only through curating education that universities can maintain at the cutting edge of innovation and best practice.”
The comments come as government body FASEA prepares to determine which education courses will be approved under the new regime for mandatory financial adviser professional standards.
Yesterday ifa reported concerns that some academics sitting on the FASEA board may be prone to conflicts of interest arising from their professional ties to certain higher education providers.
Well Said Katherine Hunt. Financial Planning is and always be about the interactions you have with individual clients, the relationships, their personal situations. Text book education certainly isn’t working in our school education system, and it doesn’t equip Uni students today to deal with the “real world”. Perhaps with the new education requirements (that potentially will be heavily conflicted) , there will be 5000 available experts looking for roles in Universities to teach instead of providing advice??
FASEA has got it wrong. University degrees give you the groundwork needed, basic principles and an ability to learn new content and research. To work in financial planning you definitely need this background but you also need very detailed and specific knowledge in areas such as Centrelink, aged care, investments, law and insurances, super etc..
Universities are not equipped at present to be providing these specific detailed concepts that the financial planning industry needs. This is why planners have had to go to private institutions like Aged Care Steps, Kaplan, external SMSF providers for education etc. To force existing degree qualified and experienced advisers to study in this context is deeply flawed when what’s needed is specific specialized knowledge. In short experienced financial planners are going to gain nothing by studying super 101. Universities don’t have the funding or skills to provide these specific areas of knowledge and it’s not an efficient allocation of tax payers money to be offering them.
Well said, it’s a complete debacle to totally disregard past Business, Finance and Economic degrees. Along with many years of specific Financial Advice study and actual real world advice experience.
FASEA has so far over stepped their mandate its become a joke.
There is a significant difference between academics and education.
Academics is some theory that may or may not work in practice.
Education is presenting to a client at the coal face and not being shown the door.
So let me see if I understand this. The FASEA Board MAY have conflicts of interest as they represent education providers. The folks teaching are not from those in the field, rather academics. All this goes on at a time when our indutry faces a huge upheaval after years of enquiries misteps all amounting to nothing much.
I applaud Katherine on her stance and agree that teaching the skill of financial planning is not merely from a text book with those leading the charge never having been in the role of an IFA for any period of time of value, if at all.
But these folks in FASEA better understand that they are playing with business owners lives, an industry that has made strides to advance itself and ALL of it at the direction of those that have not a clue about this indutry and now they expect consumers and the industry to have faith applying arcaic methods of teaching to modern day reality that is our clients and consumers at large. Tail wagging the dog…? Lets see.
And what will this resolve.? Education will never clean up any industry. There are 2 strands here, education and the application of law. Ever feel like a mouse in a lab, been experimented with….I do.
Agree wholeheartedly with Dr Hunt but it’s not going to happen.. … to paraphrase the words of a Vice Chancellor overseeing a broke School of Commerce.. “‘we are hoping that continued favourable movements in the AUD will lead to further enrolments in offshore students. Until those numbers increase further redundancies, retrenchments and consolidations and amalgamations will continue. Termination of casual teaching staff will be our first preference and will continue” i.e the same guy teaching Accounting 101 for 20 years with the grand sum of perhaps 2 years practical experience will be teaching you Super 101, cutting and pasting materials from google.
So in this environment of broke Universities largely dependant on overseas students, we are all lucky we’re not having to study Masters in Financial Planning written in 2018. With these people being placed in charge of deciding the definition of degree it was only a forgone conclusion of having to enrol in a new fee paying University course.
Tax payer funded and Government subsidised Universities have failed the Financial Planning profession. If the privately run courses most advisers have had to pay money for, such as Margin Lending, SMSF specialists courses, aged care, TPB courses were all made available at University level most planners with CPD requirements would have had the equivalent of a Graduate Diploma already. [b]Why have planners been forced to do specialist courses through the private sector and now we’re being pushed back into tax payer funded Universities to study elementary and introductory Units at great expense and time?[/b][i][/i]
Having been in the industry for 6 years, and just completed my Master of Financial Planning, I agree that the content needs to be updated in the courses to more accurately reflect what we do every day.
Now, the issue with non-academics teaching, is that in order to teach at University level, and particularly Master’s students, my understanding is that one must either be published (peer reviewed) or have a PhD. How many people in this industry do you know who have this level of education? How many of us have the time to do a Masters, CFP and then a PhD?
I have recently put my hand up to teach within one of the institutions that is offering the degree, and I can only teach undergraduates at the moment.
I know quite a few financial advisers, who could teach at University level, however some only have a non-related degree with a DFP done years ago with over 20 years experience. Some of these same people will not pass the new educational standards. To be clear, these same people have so much knowledge, which could be passed on to these students.
Also to be fair, the university I did my degree through has academics that go out of their way to make sure what they are teaching is a real life situation, to the point where I was asked if it was something I might have come across in my time in the industry. They want information and they want to know if what they are teaching is realistic.
I do hope that perhaps FASEA and the academics can agree that there is a wealth of knowledge to be tapped into and that not just those with the highest qualifications are given an opportunity to teach.
Agreed Dr Hunt.
I recall a young colleague in his last year of an Economics degree at Sandstone university (around 2014/15). He was working with us in an FP firm, and chose subjects that would help him be RG146 on completion.
The assignment topic assigned by the lecturer for one of his subjects was comparing the Australian Pension system to the Canadian one! (Meanwhile the young student was nowhere near clued up to the technicalities of the Australian one!!! Let alone, being a in a position to present advice to clients in a digestible manner).
So many people paying thousands of dollars to our universities, spending thousands of hours, and the qualification is not “fit for purpose”.
It is this ‘academic bubble’ mentality and inflated sense of self-importance that concerns us immensely, and on first impression is what FASEA has brought to the table.
A question though: why would someone studying an economics degree expect to be taught about eligibility for Centrelink so that they can present advice to a client? That can be self-taught from the Centrelink website. Pension systems are designed by economics graduates who work for places like Treasury. Looking at them in macroeconomic terms (by comparing two different systems) is probably very good training.
My main point is, why is the sandstone university saying “you will be RG146 compliant”? (Which is necessary to work in financial advice/services). Clearly the course’s technical detail is lacking. This young guy was learning considerably more in our office for RG146 compliance. That is what I mean by ‘fit for purpose’.
With regards to your example, if you are an economist and working in Treasury and designing pension systems, issues such as eligibility would be key. Also key, is how people “game” the social security system to become or remain eligible. This has a direct effect to (i) the Fed Budget bottomline, and (ii) how politicians ‘sell’ and implement the policy. All crucial factors in Treasury’s advice. In that respect, the technical detail is once again missing. As a comparison, when a surgeon performs open-heart surgery, I bloody well expect him to know the macro (cost-benefit of performing the surgery across my demographic, recent developments, etc) but also the specific anatomy (to perform the surgery). And I sure hope he wasn’t learning it from a public website!!
Agree with you that Macro is important, but so is practicality.
Remember though – the surgeon did not learn how to perform open-heart surgery in his or her undergraduate degree. They learned it ‘on the job’ after they got their MBBS. They mostly learned it from watching other surgeons doing actual surgery. It is a concern that there is an expectation that Uni graduates will know everything they need to know as they leave Uni. I can’t remember the source, but I do remember reading that 70% of work skills are learned at work, not in pre-employment training. That is consistent across both the trades and the professions. This is why your young bloke was learning as much from you as from Uni – and is also why you should be congratulated for employing him and becoming one of his teachers.
Agreed (thank you), and I refer you to the comments made by “A University Lecturer” further above.
A question for you. Let’s fast forward a couple of years. Would you employ this Economics Graduate come 2019 given they need a Degree in Financial Planning ? I am thinking, they would not even apply because they don’t have the right degree or most likely she/he’d submit his resume trying to get a foot in the door and you’d reject it outright because she/he’s studied Economics and did some elective units in financial planning only. I believe this is a massive ticking time bomb for the planning industry.
i think financial planning is officially dead
Good point. The early word was that people would need a ‘relevant degree.’ This is not the same as an ‘approved degree.’ Hard to see how degrees in economics, law, accounting will somehow not meet be seen as relevant. A lot of power being given to a small panel to accredit training.
This whole FASEA thing is a massive con job. what planet are these idiots from? Uranus? Financial Planners are such an easy target because we don’t have anyone to represent us. FPA and AFA are irrelevant. We need a representative body that will represent PLANNERS not themselves or their conflicted partners. We don’t have a single voice to offer any resistance so everyone expects us just to tow the line. HOW WRONG THEY WILL BE, When in a few short years there will be no financial planning profession- Then who will these lunatics attack? They will all be out of a job. Ha Ha.
Hear Hear Katherine – well said.
A very refreshing dose of common sense. Great comments from Dr Hunt. There are many true experts out there with great in-depth (technical) knowledge built up over years of practical experience. We would be wise to access this talent bank when up-skilling the next generation of financial planning practitioners.
Brilliant comment – my experience of academia – is that they are so far removed from the coal face ( this applies to Financial planning) that they are irrelevant – if not counterproductive. A totally interesting thought – get an experienced – proven stakeholder, to have an input into the process with a chance of support from a target audience. This is a unique situation – where you have experienced – competent industry specialists that are being forced back to the books – at a not insignificant cost. Least one could do is get the practitioners onboard –
I think Dr Hunt is correct. Real life education is not about theoretical models and analytics. Experts in a field bring practical strategies and insights from experience and acknowledges flexibility is required along with soft skills. Not just in financial advice… soft skills are necessary in many areas of life. Get our university education system back to where it was meant to be – a means of encouraging students to think for themselves beyond the current, innovate with a firm grasp of reality and possibility. That seems a far cry from our sausage machine and narrow focus system of today. Keep going, Katherine!
Whilst there are plenty of downsides and no educator is perfect including Kaplan, I would still commend Kaplan for putting together a cohort of lecturers and tutors that reflect Dr Hunt’s sentiments exactly. They are “real world” academics that understand how advice is delivered yet with sufficient depth of knowledge to be teaching at a Masters level.