Proud to be a professional valuer?

Citation

Gronow, S. (2000), "Proud to be a professional valuer?", Property Management, Vol. 18 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/pm.2000.11318eaa.001

Proud to be a professional valuer?

Proud to be a professional valuer?A view from the beach

The responsibility devolved on academic institutions for the quality and content for what is taught and assessed on their exempting degree courses has long been the subject of much debate and criticism. For example, "There seems to be a widely held view that, since we gave up the control of our examinations, we have seen a decline in our entry standards" (RICS, 1998, p. 6). Such views are reinforced by the competitive climate in higher education where most universities, particularly the former polytechnics, have been forced, admittedly some reluctantly, while others more enthusiastically, to become degree-awarding businesses rather than retaining little, if any, pretence of being learning institutions. It has been difficult to deflect such criticism in the light of low entry standards to courses and where low standards subsequent to entry are imposed by teaching administrators with little to offer professional education, except perhaps for excessive enthusiasm for documentation for its own sake and for improving pass rates in the guise of "efficiency and fairness to students". Final year valuation/appraisal lecturers are often faced with students having been "pushed" through the earlier years and then faced with having to explain a high failure rate in their subject which is out of line with other final year papers. Even where an attempt is made to draw a line in the earlier years of a course, pressure is still imposed to improve pass rates in the valuation subjects on the basis that other subjects have "better results". Valuation subjects are often said to be the most "challenging"and as a result pressure, whether direct or otherwise, is imposed to have these high failure rates modified to the "norm". The game has been of quantity not quality and those wishing to produce better valuers have often lost the argument causing the valuation profession to suffer as a consequence.

Yet this process of decline is set to continue, despite the move to increase "A" level entry requirements. The call for many years has been for exempting degree courses to include more business skills and to be more broadly-based. This has been echoed in the "Agenda for Change", where the call is also for courses to be "not narrowly property specific" (RICS, 1998, p. 6). It is likely that "RICS accredited courses will come under pressure to change to a more business centred syllabus" (Bill, 1998, p. 57). This can only be to the detriment of those seeking to enhance valuation skills in degree courses and the profession itself. If undergraduate courses do not provide all aspects of the unique skill of property valuers, then the profession is in increasing danger of losing its limited area of expertise to those having greater knowledge and skills in "business". Such core valuation expertise must appear at the very beginning and continue throughout professional education. The place to "top up" with peripheral business knowledge and skills is within the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) framework.

In future, it is unlikely, therefore, that there will be room in such degree courses for detailed consideration of appraisal methodology applied to, for example, contaminated properties because the application of valuation principles to such properties will be perhaps too challenging and too narrowly property specific. In attempting to attract the "best minds from spurning the bricks and mortar drudgery" (as per Bill, 1998, p. 57) the implication is that there are more important matters. Yet, in relation to many areas of valuation, how on earth can an accurate valuation be made without detailed knowledge of such "drudgery"? In the case of contaminated land, is it seriously suggested that a valuation is to be made by professionals without detailed knowledge of the "bricks and mortar drudgery", which in this case is knowledge of treatment costs and techniques and the other valuation and property specific matters. If degree courses can only produce, at best, a grounding, then the Assessment of Professional Competence will have to be very specific in technical content and very demanding in standard, topped up with a compulsory CPD programme, structured to the particular competence, if appraisals of contaminated land are to be undertaken by valuers, and relied on by clients, with any confidence.

Increasing entry standards to degree courses whilst watering down key expertise is hardly likely to produce high calibre professional valuers. The one expertise peculiar to General Practice Surveyors is that of valuation. This expertise should be promoted as requiring high levels of skill, knowledge, education and training and experience and should, therefore, be highly rewarded. This could result in:

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  professional valuers being proud to defend their valuations rather than being proud to recite their reasons for their inaccuracies;

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  valuation lecturers being proud of the standards they set and maintain for their students; and

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  the professional body which represents valuers to be held in the highest esteem by valuers and their clients.

I have a dream.

Stuart Gronow MA, BSc, FRICS,Emeritus Professor of Real Estate AppraisalUniversity of Glamorgan, retired to the Gower Peninsula,South Wales in July 1999

ReferencesBill, P. (1998), "Lay lines to reform", Estates Gazette, 11 July, pp. 56-9.RICS (1998), "The agenda for change", Presidential Address by Richard Lay, The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.