The study of real estate at the undergraduate level is commonly contained as a degree of Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in real estate. A very limited number of business schools, such as Cornell University offer a Bachelor of Science in Real Estate. Many of the programs ranked by U.S. News and World Report are Bachelor of Business Administration programs.
While business schools continue to attract future real estate professionals, many critics of business education have many complaints. Some say the schools have become too scientific, too detached from real-world issues. Others say students are taught to come up with hasty solutions to complicated problems. Another group contends that schools give students a limited and distorted view of their role - that they graduate with a focus on maximizing shareholder value and only a limited understanding of ethical and social considerations essential to business leadership. Such shortcomings may have left business school graduates inadequately prepared to make the decisions that, taken together, might have helped mitigate the financial and real estate crisis, critics say.[1] An alternative course of study to an undergraduate degree in business or real estate is the liberal arts, such as economics, government, geography or history. An aspiring real estate professional may supplement his education with a Master of Real Estate Development degree, a common prerequisite for many institutional and corporate real estate firms.
The U.S. News and World Report ranks the top 14 undergraduate programs which offer a study in real estate. [2]
(*) denotes private institution