Program Description
Clemson University’s Master of Real Estate Development program is a full-time, 56 credit-hour professional degree program that can be completed in either 18 months for entry level early career students or 12 months for experienced development professionals. Experienced development professionals complete 41 credit hours with the opportunity to exempt up to 15 credits through specific admission and portfolio requirements. The MRED Program is jointly offered by the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities and the Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business, and is administered by the Department of City Planning and Real Estate Development. Courses are drawn from the following disciplines: MBA/finance, law, architecture, city and regional planning, and real estate development.
The program creates the educational opportunity for future development entrepreneurs to produce exciting, quality projects respecting environmental and economic sustainability, social consciousness, design excellence and financial feasibility within the risk-reward framework. The development industry is complex and requires leaders trained from diverse disciplinary perspectives. The program primarily follows the principles of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), which acknowledges that development is a public private partnership and that quality development requires integrating the perspectives of community, environment and economics.
Founded in 2004, the program is open to qualified students from a wide variety of academic and professional backgrounds and seeks an interdisciplinary student body that is entrepreneurial, yet team-oriented.
Instructors are skilled professionals and academics who bring real world expertise to the classroom. Students are actively engaged with the real estate community, especially through ULI and ICSC including annual trips to Atlanta, Charlotte, the Carolina coast, Nashville and the Fall ULI Conference in Tier One markets. The program is located in the premier mixed-use office building in award-winning downtown Greenville, SC, the hub of a vibrant 1.4 million population metro area.
The program focuses on the “master builder” concept, the methodology promoting an entire vision for a community through sustainable design, creative financing, place-making and healthy communities. Graduates are prepared to be visionaries who serve as craftspersons and designers of neighborhoods and community development, those who recognize the role of the developer in guiding the different aspects of creating the built environment, within political, economic, physical, environmental, legal and sociological parameters.
For additional information about the program, course sequences, and the admissions process, please visit www.clemson.edu/mred.
Summary of Degree Requirements
For the 18-month entry level early career sequence, required courses include fifteen three-credit courses, two two-credit courses, and one one-credit course with two additional three-credit elective courses for a total of 56 credit hours. For more information see the Entry Level Early Career Sequence.
For the 12-month experienced development professional sequence, required courses include ten three-credit courses, two two-credit courses, and one one-credit course with two additional three-credit elective courses for a total of 41 credit hours. Twelve-month sequence students can exempt up to 15 credit hours during the admissions process. The number of exemptions will change the required courses. Courses noted with an asterisk in the core course list are some standard core exemptions for the 12-month sequence. For more information see the Experienced Development Professional Sequence.
