Having studied and analyzed Armenian real estate market state and the speed of market development, the authorities of Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction clearly realized the need and urge of implementing a new Master Program in order to train specialists in the sphere of Armenian real estate. It will particularly promote to the market economy standardization by means of upgrading professional skills of the real estate market participants and the quality of making decisions. Identifying the tactic objectives, the members of the consortium decided to undertake development of a two-year educational plan project. The aim of the project is to develop a new program of “Real Estate Economics and Management”.

The program will be implemented by the chair of “Economics, Law and Management” at Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction and will finish in September 2009. The aim is to develop a complex of newly taught subjects, appropriate educational materials, as well as to utilize modern methodologies in IT teaching. The new Master project considers two-year education (after bachelor degree) with final Master Degree in “Real Estate Economics and Management”. Meantime the aim of the program is to develop accelerated training courses for civil employees and those specialists who work in the appropriate field and who are in need of upgrading their professional skills in the field of real estate economics. So, the main target groups are the teaching staff of Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction, the students of the chair “Economics, Law and Management” and correspondingly of other chairs (both at the Magistracy and Bachelor).

All those specialists who practically deal with problems, concerning real estate, may also be treated as a target group. The annual number of the students, who get education in the two-year Master project, comes up to 30, while the number of the accelerated courses participants is primarily 15 for each course.

The following results are expected to be obtained at the end of the program

• A new educational plan of the “Real Estate Economics and Management” Master Program will be implemented at Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction according to European standards
• New subjects will be developed, educational aids and materials will be prepared and published according to these subjects
• Real Estate Teaching Centre will be established at the Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction
• New IT teaching methodologies will be implemented
• Advanced training for teaching staff and students of Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction will be realized
• Accelerated courses of advanced training will be developed for civil employees and for other specialists working in real estate field

The project will begin with the analysis of the University’s needs for development of a new Master Program. This analysis will be executed by all members of the consortium and will be presented during the forthcoming meeting at Yerevan State University of Architecture & Construction. A project management group will be formed in the course of the meeting. All the members of the consortium will be involved in discussions, concerning the clarity of the project objectives, planned results, activities, as well as the role of each counterpart.

Besides, the development of new subjects will be implemented by respective lecturers of Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction in the result of close cooperation with counterparts from Royal Institute of Technology and East London University.

The following twelve subjects and their credits will be developed in the course of the program, which will be included in three main modules:

Economic Module

• Economics:The course provides knowledge on market economy, which gives the main storage of knowledge necessary for understanding the economic policy and its role. The course consists of two parts: Macroeconomics, which include GDP/GNP calculation, economic growth, employment and unemployment, depreciation, fiscal and monetary policies, and Microeconomics which must make special emphasis on the study of market activity, economic flow model, theory of expiration, production theory and market equilibrium in competitive and monopoly markets, the main theory of well-being.
• Construction and Real Estate Economics and Management: The course will provide broad knowledge on Real Estate Economics, that is, knowledge, concerning the role and management of Real Estate market in the subtext of market analysis and process of new product creation. After completion of this course the students will be able to:
  - realize the connection between institutional buildings and Real Estate market activity
  - realize and explain the influence of descriptive peculiarities of Real Estate
  - explain the principles of Armenian and International engineering policy
  - realize how the Real Estate tax system is built
  - explain the capital market principles
  - perform main economic calculations in different stages of engineering activity
  - realize and perform main calculations of life cycles of various kinds of buildings
• Real Estate market analysis: This is a practical course, which is based on the international and especially the USA and European experience, gained from the study of engineering and real estate markets. The course will prepare the students to work with the advisor companies, institutional investors and Engineering companies. The following subjects will be studied more thoroughly: the decisive factors of macroeconomic equilibrium, marketplace, analysis efficiency, demand for real estate, competition offer, building plot establishment, the developer and its role in construction industry, benefit analysis, Geographical Information System analysis, relevant databases and projects.
• Investment analysis:The course includes cost theory principles. Special attention will be paid to investment methods analysis, Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), the nominal and real discounting rates, cash flow analyses.
• Real Estate Valuation and Taxation:The course will give essential knowledge about cost and valuation theories and practice which are implemented in Armenia and abroad, as well as about valuation of residential, commercial and industrial real estate. Besides, the issues on agricultural real estate, hotels, forests and limited estate rights valuation will be observed, certainly taking into account the norms existing in the professional practice. The issues of taxation system execution on different kinds of real estate will also be observed.

Law module

• Comparative Law:The course will provide students with knowledge on law system and activity, the aim of which is to provide essential legal knowledge in the course of the whole educational process. But the education will not be related only to law system study. The students will have enough knowledge to analyze and find solutions to legal problems. The course will have four main directions: legal theory, European conventional law, law systems (including European legislation), public law, private law (agreements and soon).
• Real Estate Law (Civil Code, Land Code, Law on Urban Development, environmental legislation, as well as legislation on real property registration and residential property development): The course will provide knowledge on legal aspects related to land management, building and environment, particularly the issues regarding transactions with real estate objects, land use, compulsory purchase and so on. The course approaches the Real Estate Cadastre and the property registration as a tool for making the real estate market visible.

Technical module

• Applied geodesy and mapping:The aim of the course is to provide theoretical and practical knowledge, referring to the fields of geodesy, mapping as well as measuring tools, used in these fields. The working principle of these measuring tools, their execution mechanisms, monitoring, methods of identifying height points, methods of information gathering, concerning coordinates, and issues on their execution in Geographical Information System (GIS) will be studied more thoroughly.
  After the classes a student will be able to:
  — understand the principles of geodesy tools implementation
  — understand how local and environmental geodesy systems are built
  — understand how data is developed for making maps and building GIS
• Land and Real Estate Information Systems (LIS): The course is directed to study of register activity (to wide extent). The students will get knowledge, concerning the importance of estate record, as well as Land and Real Estate Information Systems (LIS). The problem of public access towards formal information will be paid much attention. The students will also get knowledge regarding the issues on information refreshment and security, while working with LIS, to foreign experience, and will be able to make comparisons. The courses will also briefly introduce GIS.
• Urban land development: The course will provide knowledge on usage of land resources and their management. The course will be directed to the discussion of social, economic and environmental issues, the aim of which is urban land development. It will help to understand the relation of the market with the development and investments, financial atmosphere, land and building policy, law structure and development activities. The course will include issues, referred to physical projects execution, which foresee formal project decision, participation activities, execution programs, infrastructure standardization, cost calculations, land division and compulsory purchase.
• Property formation technique: The aim of the course is to provide knowledge on the following issues: how the property is divided, how it is changed. After the course students will be able to find solutions to the problems appearing in the course of real property formation. The most important parts of the course are the workshops, as well as various kinds of studies in this field. The aim of the course is also to provide knowledge about how various kinds of policies interrelated to land usage are reflected in real property formation regulations and how these regulations are coordinated by law on land usage.
• Negotiations and communication: The most important aim of the course is to provide the students with knowledge, necessary for making successful business negotiations and communication.

The new master program will last three semesters (eighteen months), and an additional semester (six months) is planned for preparing and presenting Master thesis, for which thirty credits are provided for.

In order to check the efficiency of new classes the first year of the program execution is expected to be a probation period. It means that several courses (maximum six) will start during the second year of the project. The students’ opinions on these courses will be gathered and analyzed in order to raise their quality and efficiency and to update their contents. The accelerated training courses will also be analyzed, as they are expected to be put into effect during the second year of the project execution. Appropriate lectures, textbooks, educational tools will be developed for these courses by the teaching staff of Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction and with support of the academic staff of European Union counterparts.

The next important part of the project is the establishment of real estate educational centre at Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction It will be equipped with computers and each student will have his own working place during seminars. The centre will be intensively used for the purpose of teaching and education, where new teaching methodologies will be applied. All the necessary equipments will be included in the property of Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction and will be placed in the space provided by the University for this purpose. The space will be prepared and furnished by financing of YSUAC fund. A number of economic and legal information systems (which are always updated), appropriate textbooks and tools (both national and international) will also be acquired. Besides, the centre will be provided with permanent Internet connection.

The project consortium is expected to have a web site as a very important tool for putting in information and communication of consortium members. And it means that the website must be put into execution in quite short period after the program starts and include the whole information on the project. The electronic versions of the courses will be put in the web site as soon as possible. Besides, the web site will be upgraded and developed together with the centre. This approach will help to spread information and make it available for all target groups. The information related to project development, as well as to the centre activity, will be available in the website. It is expected that this centre will become a source for spreading the best results, gained in the result of the program execution, for Armenian educational institutions teaching related professions. Besides it is supposed that the centre will be used not only by YSUAC students and lecturers but also civil employees and private sector, who will take part in the accelerated training courses. Those citizens, who search for any information concerning real estate, can also be considered as users of the centre. It is expected that one student from Armenia will go to one of the countries of European Union to get education there, one lecturer or a student from the Master Program as a new YSUAC teaching staff will take part in the international Master Program on Land Management at Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm). This is to promote the lecturers education and training, through representation thereof in other educational atmosphere. The selective courses will include a test on English Grammar and professional translation from English into Armenian and from Armenian into English.

 The project is expected to implement new IT teaching methodologies, for which a methodological seminar will be organized for the YSUAC lecturers in KTHI. During a week the lecturers will gain the experience of KTH teaching staff in order to implement it in future in Armenia. Also IT courses are expected to be held for YSUAC lecturers, at the result of which the lecturers will be able to implement the IT teaching methodologies.

The training of lecturers will be organized in different forms, that is, educational visits will be arranged from the consortium member countries to upgrade the lecturers’ professional as well as communication skills. So, the YSUAC teaching staff will make an educational visit to each of the consortium member counties for two-week period. For the purpose of educational visits the selection of lecturers will be based on their specialization in different subjects. These educational visits to European Union universities have the objectives of experience exchange, the study of new teaching methodologies, obtaining of new ideas.

During February to May of years 2008 and 2009 advertising campaigns are expected to be organized in the Republic of Armenia, booklets will be published, advertisements will appear both in mass media and by TV.

The final campaign of the project is the sum-up conference, which will be held in Yerevan, where the program results, existing achievements will be discussed and all the necessary approaches for successful cooperation of the university and business sector will be mentioned. The representatives of working group and European counterparts, the teaching staff of YSUAC and other universities, the representatives of RA Ministry of Education and Science and the Real Estate State Cadastre Committee as well as other governmental representatives will be invited to the conference.

All the investments of all the consortium members and conference participants will be gathered and announced as the conference results.