New Real Estate Degree; W. P. Carey School of Business

Mark Stapp, Director, Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice, W. P. Carey School of Business joins “Arizona Horizon” to discuss this new degree.

The W. P. Carey School of Business is launching a new undergraduate real estate degree. Real estate contributes 13–15% to the U.S. GDP — and even more in Arizona, where it’s about 17%. The degree launches in Fall 2025 and will focus on hands-on and real world learning.

Among the things students can expect: 

A real estate experiential learning lab, where students analyze live deals and work alongside mentors
Immersive simulations that tie together the physical and financial sides of real estate
Expanded mentorship and industry partnerships, bridging the classroom with the field
Arizona’s economy — and its cities — are changing, and real estate must be viewed as the social and economic framework supporting community resilience, not just buildings and development. Having good and affordable housing can attract large corporations as well as create generational wealth opportunities.

“Up until about 2011, and I have to admit that I was the person who really got rid of it and the reason is the number of people that were enrolled in the major had shrunk tremendously and there just didn’t seem to be interest, but remember this was coming out of the great recession so I recommended and created the undergraduate minor for real estate and today that is grown to the point where there is over 700 students taking those real estate courses this semester,” Stapp said.

That growth has shown him that the minor was worth creating; however, now he wants to create a major for the course and, hopefully, make it an award-winning program like the many other courses in the W.P. Carey School of Business.

“Our focus at the business school isn’t on residential sales, residential real estate is an important part of our economy and an important part of the business but we’re really focused on the bigger definition of real estate, in particular, commercial real estate and the finance of commercial real estate because it is very capital intensive,” Stapp said.

This coming August, the major will be available to ASU students. For those who are interested, the undergraduate major can be found in ASU’s class search.