Why study finance and investment management? | with the University of Liverpool Online
This week, Rob Stephens from the University of Liverpool talks about their MSc Finance and Investment Management programme. Discover how its Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) affiliation, interactive live sessions, and practical, real-world projects can kickstart your finance career. Get the details on what makes this course stand out
Participants
- Emily Slade - podcast producer and host, Prospects
- Rob Stephens - senior lecturer in finance and accounting
Transcript
Emily Slade: Hello and welcome back to Future You. The podcast brought to you by graduate careers experts, Prospects. I'm your host, Emily Slade. And in this episode we chat about the MSc Finance and investment management available at the University of Liverpool.
Robert Stephens: Hi, Emily, I'm Rob Stephens. I'm the director of studies for the Finance and Investment Management programme that's online at the University of Liverpool. And I also teach on campus and share the online board of examiners.
Emily Slade: So we're here today to talk about the MSc Finance and Investment management. Can you tell me a little bit about the programme?
Robert Stephens: Yeah, it's really exciting. The MSC is made-up of 815 credit modules. There's a short break between each one and they run consecutively. Students then finish off with a dissertation and it was launched in 2022, when we've actually got our first graduates who will be attending Liverpool for graduation. July of this year? Yeah. Which is, which is great. Yeah. It's been a long a long journey up to this point.
Emily Slade: Yeah. Oh, fantastic. So how does your background help you understand how to design A successful programme?
Robert Stephens: I don't know if I've got a conventional or an unconventional background. I did straight accounts degree and then I went into work for Barclays and I did a graduate development programme and I was there for three years. And then I went straight into teaching. And I. For a private in private colleges for 20 years.
Emily Slade: Wow.
Robert Stephens: Yeah, I know. I feel old now. And then I moved the jump from colleges into university, and when you're in private colleges, you tend to teach towards exams. It's very much exam based training whereas in the university you're trying to encourage students at this level to research and to uncover information for themselves also. So, I think with all of that background, it has helped me design a programme which is seeking academic excellence like any other Russell Group University words, but at the same time provide a programme that allows students to develop and undertake real life work tasks. I think my private colleges. Experience has also allowed me to build in formative tasks in advance of each of the summative or reassessments that the students have.
Emily Slade: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So is that really why you made the switch from college to university because of that more open learning environment?
Robert Stephens: Well, I think I made that change. I think it was a nice change of direction because after 20 years, I think you've seen pretty much everything in private sector. Well, we've seen it's quite nicely to go into something totally different. And realise probably how much you still had to learn about education.
Emily Slade: Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful.
Robert Stephens: Yeah, you're doing something totally different, and while the skills. Certainly you're learning far more skills in university education that you probably never. About before.
Emily Slade: Yeah. No, that makes complete sense. Brilliant. So what distinguishes this programme from other finance programmes offered by competitive universities?
Robert Stephens: I think people would be surprised that, not all courses offer what we call synchronous sessions, so some programmes are what I would call a self-serving programme. So you sign up, you get the information provided to you each week and then you work your way through. Well, we have our structured live sessions or synchronous sessions as we call them where the student is directly engaging with their peers, but also the lecturers and I think that makes it far more of a community field than maybe some of the programmes that students could enrol. It's CFA affiliated, which means that the CFA or chartered financial analyst body they've looked at the programme. And they've approved it in terms of the content that we teach, so the CFA is a finance professional body which writes its own syllabus, which is called the body of knowledge. And that body of knowledge is checked against the syllabus for our modules. So that makes it very relevant, I guess. I think we've got. Really good methods of assessment, so I think I mentioned earlier about having a programme whereby it made students far more real and relevant. So our assessments. Include real life tasks such as assessing projects financially and non-financially. Writing analyst reports as they might do in the real world. They might interpret data whether that's shared data or portfolio data. They might work on group presentations. Whereas again a task where you're just working solely in every single assessment that you do might provide limited insight into what you're asked to do in the real world. OK, obviously we've got our conventional lectures that we provide also and readings. We have expert authors also that have written the material from the University of Liverpool, so it's I think it. I think it's great and we always wanted to make it better. But, the content that we have in that particular programme is so thoroughly thought through and we're always looking for ways to, again mprove it further if we can.
Emily Slade: Yeah, absolutely. Is the CFA something that updates itself quite regularly, in which case that this course will remain. At the cutting edge of all of the information from the real world.
Robert Stephens: Absolutely. And I and I think also it's a help to us as well because while we're academics and we're constantly looking outside and researching for new developments; the CFA also provides us with. A stick in the ground if you like, of the current relevant factors that are affecting the finance industry by ensuring that we're always complying with that, we're always ensuring that we're relevant, which is really important.
Emily Slade: Yeah, brilliant, so who is this programme aimed at?
Robert Stephens: I think we're quite surprised really with the different angles that students have come in onto the programme from. Masters programmes are normally for those people who have done an undergraduate programme, they've then gone into the workplace and build up their professional knowledge. And then they've decided to. Invest in themselves further and get the Masters degree. But what we sometimes see are people who've got. Just then their undergrad, and they feel that they need to build up their professional CV if you like, so they immediately go into the Masters programme. Some of those students then go on to PHDS, so there's an academic route, I guess, to our programme. You've also got people who've got CFA and who feel that they've been taught to exams and they want more of a wider scope in their research, in their knowledge, and that helps them and of course, we’ve also got those people who work in industry who do some finance or some. Have jobs which have. Some financial requirement or expertise, but they feel that they lack that wider outlook. They lack that insight and they feel really that the programme can fill in lots of their gaps and help them progress in their career. What's interesting as well, Emily, which I think is worth noting is, students who join our programme don't just join and sign up to a Masters programme. If people wanted to dip their toe into the programme, they can enrol straight onto a certificate, which would be 415 credit models. Or they can do a diploma which is 815 credit modules and obviously if they complete that dissertation, then they're doing their Masters. So that's really useful for some people.
Emily Slade: Yeah. Fantastic. So lots of options there. That's brilliant. Once you've completed the course, what careers can students pursue?
Robert Stephens: Again, I think the list of careers is probably endless. Would do what I would advise students do...Professional bodies such as the CFA have a website, and on that website. They will list lots of current vacancies in the finance field, which is it's useful, I guess, to to get a current picture of what's out there. But if we think about the modules that we teach, we teach corporate finance, we talk about equity, fixed income derivatives. So lots of terms which might not mean much to some readers what it's doing, it's providing a footing for students to go into roles as analysts within might analyse market data. Stock data. They might go into manage portfolios, for businesses. They could work for government, many governments employ researchers who need finance backgrounds. You could work for large corporates, maybe working treasury or merger and acquisitions or risk management using your derivative knowledge for example, I think it's just endless. But as I said before, some people might want to stay in academia. They do their Masters. They then move on to a PhD and they might have a future career as a lecturer.
Emily Slade: Yeah, fantastic. Given your experiences, what are the challenges that you have to address in the delivery of the programme and what do students need to be prepared for?
Robert Stephens: Well, I think the biggest challenge by far is the workload. I think some people feel that an online degree is much easier than an on campus degree, which is what they would have been used to at undergrad. In reality, I would say an online degree in many ways is tougher and students just as I would have done, are working at the same time as they're studying. And for every credits of any module that equates to 10 hours of work.
Emily Slade: Wow.
Robert Stephens: So a 15 credit module over 8 weeks is actually expected to take 150 hours.
Emily Slade: Yeah.
Robert Stephens: Which means students should be doing maybe somewhere between 15 and 20 hours of work a week. And I think it's that buy in right at the outset that's toughest. Students need to know that this isn't a free degree. It isn't an under 80 degree it carries exactly the same weighting as any other degree that is awarded on that stage. Graduation from our students, so I think as long as students see that, that's the commitment. They will do really well and I guess the other challenge that we have is finding the right mix that works for people. Different people study in different ways. Some people like to do practise in order to learn. Some people love to read independently. Some people will want to watch lectures, so we provide lectures every week, but the lecture will never, ever cover all the material that student will need. So they need to make sure that they can take. Some of the basics from the lecture. Be prepared, then, to carry out their own independent research and then back that up with exercises that we're providing on the course. So things students need to be quite dynamic and they need to be quite adaptable to maximise their learning and the last thing that I haven't mentioned is of course time zones. Our students are from all around the world, so when we're running synchronous sessions for example. We're always thinking about where that student is in the world and how they can get the best experience by working with the best group that give them a competent a convenient time to study and also to be able to make this course manageable for them. But we do our best with that and we have a lot of success in ensuring that. You know, students leave the programmes totally satisfied.
Emily Slade: Yeah, absolutely. Wonderful. What to you is the most exciting aspect of the course?
Robert Stephens: I think the most exciting to aspect for me is what you come out with because many students, as I've said, they're coming in from very different backgrounds and they really are leaving the programme with a Russel Group University degree. But they're also leaving with all of these work skills, these relevant skills that they can take out into industry and market themselves and make good, good careers for themselves and that. That's something that's fantastic. I think sometimes it undergraduate degree you've got those building blocks, but we really take those students on that journey on the Masters programme.
Emily Slade: Yeah, brilliant. If students want to or potential students want to find out more about the course, where can they go?
Robert Stephens: Well, they can go to the website. What we've got is a team of people that are dedicated to answering academic and non-academic questions. And I would strongly recommend. That rather than just fill in an application form when apply for a course anywhere. That they talk to people, the support is there, and they can find out every single element of what's going to be required of them over their journey to complete that Masters.
Emily Slade: Fantastic. Well, was there anything else that you wanted to mention at all?
Robert Stephens: No, I just think students would be in for the real rewarding experience by taking on the Masters programme and the most important thing like anything else, is to enjoy it and use the lecturers that are there to really make you experience as special as it can be. And they’re there permanently over each of those eight week blocks.
Emily Slade: Yeah. Oh, fantastic. Well, that's brilliant. Thank you so much for your time today.
Robert Stephens: No, thank you, Emily. It's been really enjoyable.
Emily Slade: Thanks again to Rob for their time. For more information on how to apply for the course, check out the show notes below. If you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. Thank you as always, for listening and good luck on your journey to future you.
Notes on transcript
This transcript was produced using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.
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