WKU News

The Gordon Ford College of Business offers one of the top Personal Financial Planning programs in the nation, according to Wealth Management magazine.

The WKU Personal Financial Planning Program ranks 18^th in the country out of 109 programs surveyed.

The rankings considered only four-year, on-campus, full-time programs registered by the Certified Financial Planning (CFP®) Board. 

“We are very pleased that the long-standing efforts of Dr. Edward Wolfe, the more recent effort of Professor Andrew Head, and the other faculty and staff in WKU’s Department of Finance have been recognized with the high ranking among personal financial planning university degree programs,” said Dr. Ron Rhoades, director of the WKU Personal Financial Planning Program.

“Each year we continue to make improvements to the high quality of our residency Personal Financial Planning Program,” Rhoades continued. “We survey employers from throughout our region, keep abreast of the technological and other changes in the financial planning profession, and adapt and expand our instruction accordingly.”

Wealth Management magazine ranked Personal Financial Planning programs based on a weighted average of the following indicators:

• Degrees granted
• Number of full-time faculty equivalents
• Ratio of faculty with earned CFP®certification
• Capstone course offered
• Minimum number of courses required to graduate
• Number of elective courses offered beyond the minimums required by the CFP® Board

Texas Tech University was named the top program in the country with University of Wisconsin-Madison, Utah Valley University, University of Missouri, and the University of North Florida rounding out the top five. See the full list here: https://www.wealthmanagement.com/careers/top-ranked-colleges-financial-planning

WKU’s Personal Financial Planning program celebrated its 30^th anniversary in 2018 and is one of the founding undergraduate CFP®-Board registered programs in the country. Graduates of the program are eligible to sit for the CFP® and the Accredited Financial Counselor (AFC) examinations.

“Employers know when they hire a graduate from our program, that student has received not only the foundational knowledge required to sit for the CFP® exam, but also has been trained to become an excellent personal financial advisor,” Rhoades said.