Deakin eyes advisers to fill staff demand

Speaking to ifa, Deakin University associate professor Adrian Raftery said a number of factors have lead the school to look for master’s qualified advisers to lead courses.

“Internally with promotions and workloads I’m also losing some hours from other lecturers who are basically just doing other roles within the university rather than being in front of students,” he said.

“Just to maintain the status quo there’s obviously a need to recruit more staff, and then also we have an expectation that our number of student enrolments between now and 2024 will naturally increase purely because of the changes.”

Legally, lecturers are required to have a higher qualification than their students, Mr Raftery explained, meaning only master’s qualified advisers would be able to lead bachelor’s courses.

“We’ve had a large number of inquiries already on a part-time basis, which is fantastic because there are so many advisers who are willing to put back into the next generation and impart their knowledge,” he said.

“And I guess for us ourselves, one thing that we pride ourselves on is that all of our lecturers have practitioner experience, and we don’t recruit people from the finance department who don’t know an SOA from their backside, they’ve actually lived it and breathed it, which is dreadfully important.”

Mr Raftery added that most Australian universities will not have the right staff to meet the increased demand placed on financial advice courses in preparation for the incoming adviser standards.

“There’s a number of universities trying to get FPEC accreditation but don’t have the staffing – we know the staff aren’t out there, and all they’re going to be doing is poaching staff from other universities,” he said.

“There’s going to be some poaching that occurs, and that’s just shifting the problem rather than creating new opportunities.”