Mapping Academic Curriculum to the Industry Needs: Cases of Real Estate Education in the UK

The objective of this paper is to explore the extent to which current real estate academic curriculum in the UK align with industry needs in order to identify key areas for reform. A case study of four Universities was undertaken in the study. These cases were randomly selected from the Midlands, Northern and Southern parts of the UK. Data for the study was collected through a desk-top review of real estate curriculum from the four selected Universities and analysed using mind mapping approach. The study revealed that though knowledge from real estate academic curriculum aligns with the industry in six out of nine knowledge base areas, there were gaps in knowledge in the three areas considered most significant to the needs of industry. The study, therefore argues that universities may have dedicated enormous resources to educating real estate graduates in modules that are not necessarily essential to their daily job roles. This study is important in the sense that it is the first ever conducted to identify the key areas of the curriculum that show gaps in real estate education offered by universities in the UK. The findings of the research could inform future curriculum reform.