Question Summary:
Is it permissible to work as a finance professor?

Question Detail:

Assalamu alaikum,
Is it permissable to work as a finance professor at universities? This job has two aspects:
Research: In many cases finance research involves investigating impermissible contracts. For example, a research question is, how does a firm finance its investments? With loan or stock issuance? To answer this researcher also looks at the data and investigates the interest rates on past loans.
Teaching: Teaching mainly involves topics related to stocks and debt. On the stock side, there are impermissible contracts such as options. On the debt side, conventional valuation methods usually involve interest rates and cash flow discounting.

Please kindly advise me about whether this job is permissible. May Allah (swt) be pleased with you. Jazakallah khair.

Answer :

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
As-salāmu ‘alaykum wa-rahmatullāhi wa-barakātuh.
Your teaching career as a finance professor has to be analysed in the context of teaching in university. To merely discuss interest related issues without engaging in interest bearing deals is not prohibited.
Students in a university enrol for various reasons. Some students may enrol in your finance lectures to merely understand the topic. Others may enrol to advance in that topic by teaching the topic or practising on it. Since you do not know what a student may do with the knowledge imparted to him, you will not be responsible if he practises on your lectures and promotes conventional finances.
However, as Muslims we are averse to interest and other un-Islamic modes of finances. Therefore, teaching conventional finances in a university is disliked. [1]
And Allah Ta’āla Knows Best
Aboobakr Siddeeq bin Mufti Amjad Mohammad
Student Darul Iftaa 
Azaadville, JHB, South Africa 
Checked and Approved by,
Mufti Ebrahim Desai.