ARCHITECTURE

2012
2013
2014
2014
American University founds MSRED and Certificate
program in its Kogod School of Business.
University of Arizona founds MRED program in its
College of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape
Architecture.
George Washington University establishes MBA and
graduate certificate in “Walkable Urban Real Estate”
in its School of Business.
real estate education
Jesse Keenan, Columbia University: “So if real estate
development is both an art and a science (more specifically,
social science), how does one try to understand
the discipline and how do you communicate this understanding
for the advancement of a profession? . . . . [W]e
have endeavored to build a historic narrative and theoretical
foundation for advancing an autonomous discipline
of real estate development separate and apart
from the academies of urban planning and real estate
financial management often found in business schools.
In contrast, real estate development is the confluence
of an intricate composition and operation of design,
finance, and law.” 39
1. “About the James A. Graaskamp Center for Real Estate,” Wisconsin School of Business,
accessed April 15, 2015, https://bus.wisc.edu/centers/james-a-graaskamp-center-for-realestate/about%20the%20graaskamp%20center.
2. Jesse Keenan, Research Director, Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE), Graduate School
of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University, interview with the
author, February 23, 2015.
3. Given the lack of a professional accrediting organization and the porous boundaries of
real estate education, a comprehensive list of real estate programs in the United States
may be impossible to compile given the variety of departmental homes and degree granting
programs that offer an emphasis on real estate education.
4. Journal of Property Management (Spring 1946): 176.
5. Richard Ely, known as a founder of land economics and founder of the American
Economic Association, taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for three decades
starting in 1892.
6. Richard M. Hurd, Principles of City Land Values (New York: The Record and Guide, 1903).
Hurd served as a mortgage officer and was president of the Lawyers’ Mortgage Insurance
Company rather than an academic.
7. The organization changed its name to the National Association of Real Estate Boards in
1916, then changed it to National Association of REALTORS in 1974. National Association
of REALTORS, “Field Guide to the History of the National Association of REALTORS,”
accessed August 25, 2015, http://www.realtor.org/field-guides/field-guide-to-the-historyof-the-national-association-of-realtors.
8. According to Marc Weiss, the Institute was “an outgrowth of teaching and research on
‘Landed Property and the Rent of Land’ that Ely had been conducting for nearly two
decades and was the “organization most responsible for studying economic aspects of
housing policy in the 1920s. Through his tenure, Ely established relationships with government
officials, civic associations, and trade organizations. Ely also edited the Land
Economics Series of textbooks co-sponsored by the Institute, the National Association
of Real Estate Boards, and the United YMCA Schools. Marc A. Weiss, “Richard T. Ely
and the Contribution of Economic Research to National Housing Policy, 1920–1940,”
Urban Studies 26 (1989): 115–126.
9. These universities included New York University, University of Wisconsin, Ohio State
University, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and Indiana University.
10. Programs and courses in real estate are housed in a combination of business schools,
economics departments, and urban planning. To a large extent, academic real estate was
a limited endeavor in the 1930s and 1940s. Individuals known for their scholarly work,
such as Hurd, Ely, Richard Ratcliff, Henry Hoagland, and Homer Hoyt worked in government
and the private sector as well as in universities.
11. Journal of Property Management, 176.
12. Homer Hoyt, One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago: The Relationship of the
Growth of Chicago to the Rise in its Land Values, 1830–1930 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1933). This book stemmed from Hoyt’s dissertation in economics at the
University of Chicago. Throughout the 1930s textbooks by Ely, Earnest Fisher, Arthur
Weimer, and Hoyt help establish the shape of the field.
13. “About ULI,” Urban Land Institute, accessed July 15, 2015, http://uli.org/about-uli/.
14. Richard T. Ely, Ground Under Our Feet: An Autobiography (New York: Macmillan Co.,
1938), 234.
15. Specific to real estate, in California after the war “some of the leading real estate people
. . . . pondered the question of how to raise the educational level and technical ability of
the many individuals in the real estate industry.” With the support of the state legislature,
the University of California developed real estate education and research programs at
Berkeley and Los Angeles. “Real Estate Research Program,” Real Estate Bulletin (September-October
1960): 457.
16. Daniel Gage received a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan and taught
at the University of Oregon. Daniel D. Gage, “Status of Collegiate Real Estate Training,”
Journal of Property Management (Spring 1946): 175–184.
17. George Beal, “The Place of Planning in the Architectural Curriculum,” Journal of Architectural
Education 12, no. 1 (1956): 19.
18. In 1954 the Ford Foundation provided $35 million over 12 years to reform business education
in the United States. James Howell taught economics at Stanford after receiving
a PhD at Yale. The Carnegie Corporation also sponsored studies on business programs.
Scott Kohler, “Program to Strengthen Business Education: Ford Foundation, 1954,”
Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society, Duke University, 2007, accessed
August 25, 2015, https://cspcs.sanford.duke.edu/sites/default/files/descriptive/program_
to_strengthen_business_education.pdf.”
19. Arthur Weimer, “The Teaching of Real Estate and Business Administration,” Land
Economics (February 1956), 92–94; James R. Webb and Halbert C. Smith, “United States,”
in Real Estate Education Throughout the World: Past, Present and Future, Karl-Werner
Schulte, ed. (New York: Springer Science+Business Media, 2002), 324.
20. Richard Ratcliff, Real Estate Analysis (New York: McGraw Hill, 1961). Ratcliff taught at
the University of Wisconsin and is credited with transforming Richard Ely’s program in
land economics into a formal department, now the Department of Real Estate and Urban
Land Economics.
21. Patric H. Hendershott, Thomas G. Thibodeau, and Halbert C. Smith, “Evolution of the
American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association,” Real Estate Economics 37, no.
4 (2009): 559–560.
22. The NAREB and NAR have an Education Committee but real estate faculty at these meetings
usually did not discuss academic topics, but rather realtor education and training.
23. David Rowlands taught at the University of Pennsylvania. David T. Rowlands, “Some
Reflections on Real Estate and Urban Economics,” Proceedings, American Real Estate and
Urban Economics Association, Vol. II (1967): 5–11.
24. Jesse Keenan, Research Director, Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE), Graduate School
of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University, interview with the
author, February 23, 2015.
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