Bringing The Outside In: The Coalescence Of Industry And Academics In Real Estate Education

In 2005, the researchers conducted a pilot study of graduate real estate programs that examined the coalescence of industry and the classroom in 14 well-recognized programs from around the world (Chambers and Worzala, 2005). This study will expand the survey pool of respondents to include graduate programs listed in the tenth edition of ULI's Directory of Real Estate Development and Related Education Programs (2005) as well as graduate real estate programs certified by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). Like the original study, we will survey academics within the various programs to determine how the graduate programs are enhanced by directly incorporating real estate industry professionals into the curriculum as well as how the programs provide external opportunities for graduate students to interact with business professionals. The results of this study will confirm which strategies are the most common and establish a ìbest practicesî that are in other graduate real estate programs around the world. Strategies to be examined include the use of project-based courses, mentoring and shadowing programs, speaker series, internships, networking events, executive-in-residence programs, career fairs, guest lecturers, alumni associations and field trips. In addition, several questions will focus on the respondentsí perceptions as to the most effective strategies in accomplishing student/industry interaction. We will also query the academics about alternative performance measurements and assessment tools that could be used to rank real estate graduate educational programs. In summary, this study will compare and contrast the integration of the real estate industry into graduate academic programs around the world.