Now, here’s a new credential: certified college planner

Joseph F. Hurley was flourishing as an expert on 529 funds and other college investment plans.

But the Pittsford, N.Y., certified public accountant believed he could build an even bigger business on his expertise, as well as help other financial advisers who were tapping into growing parental anxieties about college costs.

So Mr. Hurley established the National Institute of Certified College Planners and created a professional designation, the certified college planning specialist.

Now Mr. Hurley is hoping to convince the adviser community, including a number of skeptics, that it is worth plowing through 600 pages of course work and paying $1,200 in tuition to add “CCPS” to the alphabet soup that already trails their names, from CFP and ChFC to RFC and CLU.

“The demand is out there, and advisers want to distinguish themselves as specialists in this field while there are still relatively few people who know a lot specifically about college planning,” says Mr. Hurley.

His aim is to make parents feel comfortable in the knowledge that advisers or planners with a CCPS designation know what they’re talking about.

Judy Miller is a member of the institute’s first class, which so far has signed up at least 40 advisers and planners, and she believes that the CCPS designation will significantly boost her credibility with clients.

Clouding the waters

“College planning has been tainted with all sorts of scam operations,” says Ms. Miller, whose practice, College Solutions in Alameda, Calif., is devoted solely to financial planning for college.

“Anybody who wants to know what it means will be able to go to [the institute’s] website and examine the training involved. And that will give a great boost to me in my marketplace,” she says.

Some outside observers, however, are ambivalent about Mr. Hurley’s initiative.

“Anything that helps advisers continue to learn and grow and be able to specialize, I’m a 100% proponent of,” says Ora Kaine, vice president of the U.S. adviser group for American Express Financial Advisors Inc. in Minneapolis, which has about 10,000 advisers nationwide. Yet, says Ms. Kaine, in a marketplace that also recently has seen the establishment of an Institute of Certified Divorce Planners, “what does it really mean to consumers? If there are too many designations, it really just clouds the waters.”

The CCPS designation also might be overly narrow, suggests Jesse Arman, vice president of academic affairs at the College for Financial Planning in Greenwood Village, Colo. Thirty years ago, the college created the certified financial planner designation, which today is considered the standard among advisers.

The college now has five of its own specialty designations, including chartered mutual fund counselor. But “we don’t have a specialty in, say, emergency funds. It’s part of every single course we offer. The same thing with college planning.”

Dallas Martin, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators in Washington, says he has “great respect” for financial designations such as the CPA.

But, he says, he isn’t “certain in my mind that portraying yourself as an expert just because you have this certification means that you know any more than people working at colleges and universities.”

Booting up

Mr. Hurley has been a CPA for 24 years and has specialized in financial planning for college ever since he first encountered New York’s 529 plan about three years ago.

As a CPA with a Rochester, N.Y., firm, he began developing a specialty in 529s in 1998. A year later, he was testifying in Washington about the Internal Revenue Service’s proposed regulations for 529s. He then began speaking on the topic in other settings and wrote a book about it.

Two years ago, he started Savingforcollege.com, an online portal for 529 plans that garners about 200,000 visitors a month.

As Mr. Hurley conducted what he calls “boot camp” sessions for advisers, educating them about 529s, he says, attendees would joke, “So where’s my plaque?”

That’s when the idea for the institute and CCPS occurred.

He was joined by Jeffrey Clark, a consultant for the banking industry, and joint-venture partners from College Funding Inc., which specializes in short-term financing maneuvers such as obtaining scholarships and liquidating assets.

Mr. Hurley, Mr. Clark and the two College Funding partners – Rick Darvis, CPA, and Ron Them, a registered financial consultant – are among the five members of the institute’s advisory board. Another five members soon are to be added from what Mr. Clark calls “affiliate or periphery groups and marketplaces,” such as college financial aid officers and high school guidance counselors.

Each CCPS candidate must have a professional financial certification such as CFP or RFC, professional financial licensing and a “combination of education and experience deemed satisfactory” by the advisory council.

The course work is divided into about 200 pages of material in each of three modules – saving for college, paying for college and advanced college funding strategies. Enrollees can do their reading online or on paper.

The one-hour test for each module is online, and students must score a minimum of 70% to pass. Each successful CCPS must complete 12 hours of continuing-education requirements a year to maintain the designation.

The amount of course work and the continuing-education requirements impress Ms. Kaine of American Express.

“The prerequisites are pretty substantial,” she says. “Unless it’s someone who really plans to focus their practice on college planning, this might make it tough for the program to get a following.”