Eat what you kill.

It's not the most subtle description of the career path for financial advisors, but it is accurate.

Historically, the financial advice industry has been built around people who can come to the job and quickly build books of business to generate revenue. Young advisors have been expected to tap their friends and family for money and aggressively pursue new clients to bring assets to the table.

For the most part, graduates fresh out of college are not ideal candidates for this kind of work. But with financial advisors entering their 70s and a serious shortage of incoming advisors on the horizon, universities and colleges offering financial planning degrees are becoming a much more important source of new entrants to the industry.

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"This issue will become critical in the next five years or so," said Marina Shtyrkov, wealth management research analyst at consulting firm Cerulli Associates. "The industry headcount is relatively stable now but it will decline more dramatically going forward.

"The schools will be an important factor in addressing the problem."

The need is great. Cerulli estimates that close to 40% of the roughly 311,305 advisors in the country, managing more than $8 trillion in assets, plan to retire in the next 10 years. Headcount in the industry is expected to decline by 5.8% between 2017 and 2022 compared to a 1.6% increase between 2012 and 2017.

There are currently more certified financial planners over the age of 70 than under 30.

School administrations are answering the bell.

There are now more than 200 colleges and universities offering 300 financial planning programs that enable graduates to take the CFP exam, according to the Certified Financial Planner Board. That compares to about 125 five years ago.

Also, 44% of the programs are undergraduate degrees, 12% graduate and 1% PhD. Forty-three percent are certificate programs often taken at night and/or online.