Fast-track your finance knowledge
Keeping up with the ever-changing financial landscape is vital for your next career step – but how do time-poor leaders make room for study?
“I’d come back to Perth from London, where I worked in investment banking, and I was looking for something to study. The Master’s degree was perfect for me because I love maths and problem solving,” says Elizabeth Gaines, outgoing CEO of Fortescue Metals, who did her Master of Applied Finance at Macquarie University Business School (MQBS) over two years in the mid-1990s. “If they say an MBA is an inch deep and a mile wide, the Master’s degree is an inch wide and a mile deep. It’s a fantastic course – and I learned an awful lot that I’ve used throughout my career.”
Once upon a time, it was only finance specialists signing up for the MAppFin, as it’s known at MQBS. “These days, many people coming to study are not in finance roles but they realise it’s essential knowledge, particularly as they move up to the next level in their career,” says Lindesay Brine, who did the degree himself in 2006 and is now director of the Postgraduate Applied Finance Program at MQBS.
How we study has also changed. The demand these days is for shorter postgraduate courses – those that students can take individually as stepping stones or to complete a Master’s over time. Past graduates can also add on new short courses to upskill in areas such as Digital Finance and Sustainable Finance.
“Some students will take a Graduate Certificate in Applied Finance and it will be all they need right now, particularly if they’re at a life stage that makes it difficult to fit in a full-on degree,” says Professor Yvonne Breyer, deputy dean of education and employability at MQBS.
“In the past, grad certs have been off-ramps for students who’ve found they can’t complete the Master’s because of work or family commitments. Increasingly, they’re now entry points, which students use as a pathway to return to further study later, when they’ll have those credits recognised.”
Brine and Breyer emphasise the importance of the word “applied” in both the degree and short-course programs. Up-to-the minute real-world corporate finance problems are identified for students to work on and discuss in class. “We take topical financial problems and conundrums from the news and ask students to come up with advice for a company as to how they should tackle that particular issue,” says Brine. “Applied solutions are the name of the game.”
Learn more about Macquarie University Business School and the Master of Applied Finance at