There are a subset of people working for colleges and universities throughout the U.S. and Canada who serve in a role similar to corporate real estate officers in the private sector. Borrowing from the CoreNet Global folks who have credentialing programs for "Master of Corporate Real Estate" and "Senior Leaders in Real Estate", I got to thinking: why shouldn't university and college real estate managers and directors have a credentialing program too?
What it would provide to the industry:
- Technical proficiency
- Best practices
- Leveraging technology
- Emerging trends in higher education
- Aligning real estate with institutional goals
Sure, we need to be technically proficient real estate practitioners, but we also need to understand our business, which is not just profit/loss and what the balance sheet shows in any given quarter. Higher Education Real Estate Professionals are impacted by an even broader array of federal and state laws, institutional policies and practices, and often have the authority of eminent domain. We're expected to do a lot with little, and to do it with the assistance of private sector help requires substantial investments of time and drafting RFPs.
We're a smart lot. People in our industry come from all over, including the private sector - we're attorneys or former commercial brokers.
We work for institutions of higher education. Why can't we find the discipline to be taught how to do our job better?
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