Real Estate Education Vs Real Estate Practice in Emerging Economies - A Challenge for Globalization

The historical, social and cultural norms and systems prevalent in a society tend to shape the need for and therefore the practice of various professional disciplines and real estate education sometimes fails to capture these salient real world issues that affect its practice. In emerging economies, particularly those with a history of colonialism, real estate education is often derived from the tenets of practice obtainable in the countries to which they were once colonies, without careful consideration of the socio-economic, cultural, historical and socio-political differences. Such inappropriate practices gradually metamorphose over time in response to academic and societal pressures, often resulting in a widening gap between academic instruction and professional needs. Education that is based on principles and methods derived from a different business environment and which teaches practices which bear little or no relationship to the needs of local market makes it difficult for graduates to apply their skills in employment without re-training, causing frustration to both employer and employee. In such circumstances, vocational academic education is perceived as irrelevant to the employability of its graduates which undermines both the university sector and the profession itself, and as well as limiting the quality and availability of professional services to the society. In a comparative review of real estate education versus real estate practice in Nigeria and England, our findings show that although real estate education in Nigeria has its roots in the UK-based RICS programme of studies, there has been a gradual transformation and an integration of societal and cultural norms as well as practice methods from other countries. The current practice therefore resembles a hybrid of some sort that is largely subjective depending on the level of professional exposure which the practitioners possess. This paper suggests that efforts to globalize real estate education should retain the over-riding need to supply a local employment market and thus pay serious attention to the different Ñenvironment_ in which practice is most likely to occur. It promotes the importance of Ñemployability_ of graduates and thus the Ñpractice environments_ in real estate education as a basis for curriculum development and calls for the recognition that real estate practice is spatially and competency bound as well as historically and culturally specific. A clearer understanding of these differences within both the education and the professional sectors is necessary to produce more relevant and useful real estate practitioners and thereby enhance the sustainability and globalization processes.