Challenges Of Vocational And Higher-Level Real Estate Education In Finland

Electronics and information technology sectors have faced extremely fast growth in Finland during recent years. Unfortunately, the real estate sector as well as most other traditional technical sectors have not been able to follow this development, but have actually lost relative attractiveness among students. In this paper, guidelines for real estate education are searched in order to increase the attractiveness of the sector among students and workforce. Current education supply is analysed in order to find possible supply gaps. Suggestions are made to improve the attractiveness of the sector. In Finland the real estate education traditionally follows the continental (German) engineering tradition with focus on the construction of property. The pan-European change of the property sector has, however, changed the industrial structure of the real estate sector towards greater business-orientation. This development has major implications on the real estate education in Finland. These structural changes are similar in most other European countries. In Finland, traditional real estate education is largely based on the study of construction technology, house-building and surveying. Education is technology-oriented, and economic and financial aspects have received minor attention. This is the case in vocational education and training as well as in universities and polytechnics. The data concerning real estate education is based on a research project made for Tekes, the National Technology Agency. The aim of the project was to collect information concerning real estate education in Finland in order to find out the current state of the Finnish real estate education. Real estate education is classified by subject of education as well as by geographical location of the educational institute in question. In the future, business related and service related aspects should get greater emphasis in real estate education. The emphasis should be more and more on e.g., team work, quality issues, project management and project work, customer orientation, international standards and criteria etc. Increasing the business and service orientation of real estate studies could also increase the attractiveness of real estate studies, which have traditionally been very Technology-oriented.