University Real Estate Education: Irrelevant and Worthless in Europe and the US?

Real estate educators should be disturbed by the findings in a 2003 report on ìHuman Capitalî in the European real estate industry. The Equinox Partners/Urban Land Institute report found that formal real estate education at the undergraduate and to a greater extent the graduate level is considered irrelevant or of insufficient value to the major firms in the industry. Similar to their U.S. counterparts, European respondents place relatively low value on academic training in property. óthe lowest ranked of 12 skills and attributes. Consistent with the low value respondents place on formal education, they also believe that changes or expansion of university curricula is less important than other factors in attracting, developing and retaining the next generation of property professionals. Only about 27 per cent of the real estate organizations new hires were recent graduates of property or MBA programs. Yet, 60 per cent of all the respondents hired a graduate or an undergraduate in the past year. A closer look at the data and the analysis suggests that the findings may a function of the size of firm and the nature of the respondents. Property consultants and large firms appear to be more favorably disposed to hiring real estate graduates than smaller firms.