Centennium of collegiate real estate education: a prospection on “the search for a discipline” in the American school of business

• Published in: Journal of European real estate research 2024-10, Vol.17 (2), p.309-325
• Main Author: K’Akumu, Owiti A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Academic disciplines; Business education; Business schools; Curricula; Financial management; Higher education; Qualitative research; Research methodology; Social sciences
• ISSN: 1753-9269; 1753-9277
• DOI: 10.1108/JERER-02-2024-0009

PurposeThis study reviews the teaching of real estate in the USA for the first 100 years after the foundational curriculum was laid down in 1923 by three key institutions: the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB), the Institute for Research in Land Economics and Public Utilities (The Institute) and the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Its line of investigative pursuit is the persistent lamentation by American real estate scholars that real estate is not getting the respect it deserves as an academic discipline compared to its peers in the school of business such as accounting, finance and marketing. The study addresses a fundamental question: What is the cause of this endless “search for a discipline”? This is motivated by the belief that identification of the root cause of this “search for a discipline” will lead to the requisite solution: the intellectual foundation of the real estate discipline.Design/methodology/approachThe study used qualitative document analysis to review two primary documents published in 1959 as reports on business education in the USA: (1) Higher Education for Business, financed and sponsored by the Ford Foundation, and (2) The Education of American Businessmen – financed and sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The impacts of the publications on the teaching of real estate to date have been reviewed in the context of scholarly actions and literature that has been generated in relation to the two documents.FindingsThe two primary documents impacted negatively on the teaching of real estate. The committee members who produced the two reports had indicated that real estate did not fit into the business curriculum hence should not be taught in business school. This conclusion led to unintended negative outcomes for real estate education. The negative impact of the reports arose principally because the teachers of real estate misinterpreted the outcome to mean that they should tweak the real estate curriculum to fit in the pedagogical framework of the business school. This reaction is responsible for perpetuating the identity crisis that has plagued real estate as an academic discipline since its inception as a subject of study in 1923. Secondly, at the inception of the real estate education in 1923, while the AACSB accepted real estate as a discipline in the school of business, Richard T. Ely wrote the curriculum under land economics which has led to the persistent collegiate di