July 1, 2008
…"The evolution of the industry has made it so that you need a degree," says Raphael Bostic, director of the master of real estate development program at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "It used to be that a lot of real estate deals were done with a smile and a handshake; it was about who you knew. But there has been a much larger participation of Wall Street-type firms and those firms don't really care who you are, per se. They are much more interested in the hard numbers and very detailed, sophisticated analysis." The maturation of the industry, says the director, has necessitated education across all specialties…