CFP Board moves to strengthen academic underpinning of planning profession

The Certified Financial Planning Board of Standards Inc. will establish a new doctoral program, launch an academic journal and explore the feasibility of an academic center, the organization said Thursday. The moves are part of the CFP Board’s continuing effort to strengthen the educational foundation of the profession. Beginning this fall, Louisiana State University will offer a Ph.D. in financial planning through its E.J. Ourso College of Business. It will be the first financial planning doctoral program housed in a business school accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. “This is a big deal,” CFP Board chief executive Kevin Keller said during a webcast. Financial planning Ph.D. degrees are offered independently of business schools at Kansas State, Texas Tech, the University of Georgia and the University of Missouri. The CFP Board also is launching a peer-reviewed academic journal in collaboration with the publisher John Wiley & Sons. Its content will focus on the theoretical principles of financial planning and their application in practice. “With this journal, we will be creating an academic home for those faculty who are teaching and conducting research on financial planning,” CFP Board Chairman Ray Ferrara said during the webcast. The publication will provide an avenue for academicians to gain tenure. That will help supply teachers for the more than 225 colleges and universities that offer CFP-registered programs and the more than 120 that grant baccalaureate degrees in financial planning, Mr. Keller said. The journal could become a focal point for a research facility that the CFP Board is prospectively calling the Center for Financial Planning. The CFP Board is conducting a feasibility of the initiative. The center would be an academic hub for the profession, Mr. Ferrara said. “We believe the CFP Board is ideally positioned to take a leadership role in creating a place that fosters that research in financial planning,” he said. The CFP Board grants the CFP designation and administers related academic and ethical requirements and enforcement for the 69,440 CFP professionals in the United States.