BSc (Hons)Rural Enterprise and Land Management (REALM) (with placement)

Course overview

REALM is all about making the best – most effective and most economical – use of a wide range of rural assets to achieve business objectives.

Assets include land, infrastructure, buildings, equipment and more, with vast opportunities for REALM professionals to play a vital role in managing the countryside whilst helping rural businesses to thrive.

This RICS-accredited programme is ideal for aspiring rural practice chartered surveyors, and those with an interest in estate management, agriculture, diversification, sustainability and renewable energy.

Some REALM graduates will progress to Registered Valuer Status and secure employment in the provision of valuations, professional services and in some instances, auctioneering services.

Modules you will undertake cover a broad range of knowledge and skills, including Valuation and Estate Management; Animal Production (Land Management); Farming Systems and the Environment; Planning and Development and Farm Business Management.

These, coupled with your year in industry, will leave you inspired and equipped to take on any number of exciting roles across the rural sector, whether as an independent consultant or as part of a national/global company or Government department.

The Harper Advantage

• A full placement year in industry as part of your degree, enabling you to put knowledge into practice, develop your network and discover your future ambitions
• Professional Accreditation: This degree course is accredited by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) for the Rural Surveying Pathway
• More than 15 competitive scholarships open to students on Land and Property Management routes

Learn more

For more information on the work undertaken by rural surveyors, please watch this RICS video.

For information on careers in Rural Chartered Surveying visit the Grow Your Future website.

How will I be taught?

This course shares a common first and second year with the RPM course as both are aligned to the Rural Pathway of the RICS Assessment of Professional Competence. Students will specialise in the final year, post placement, with core modules covering business and residential tenancies, advanced valuation, global agricultural trade policies and farm business management. Optional modules will allow you to consider agricultural trade policies globally, auctioneering, sustainable forestry and forestry products, renewables and infrastructure or international rural property markets.

A typical week in year 1 consists of:

• 6hrs lectures
• 6hrs seminars, site/estate visits, farm walks and surveying practicals

Land and property field trips have included visits to:

• Attingham Park and other local estates
• Earl of Plymouth Estate, Ludlow
• Flax Mill Nr Shrewsbury (the oldest iron framed building in the world)
• Commercial properties

Assessment methods

The course is assessed on a mixture of coursework and examination.

Transfer

Students may transfer between BSc REALM and BSc RPM (and vice versa) at the end of the first two years, before commencing the placement year.

Learning in Higher Education – how is it different?

Whilst a student’s prior experience or qualifications should prepare them for Higher Education, most will find that study at university level is organised differently than they might have experienced at either school or college.  Higher Education sets out to prepare students to think and learn independently, so that they are able to continue learning new things beyond their studies and into the workplace, without needing a tutor to guide them.  This means that the time spent in classes with tutors provides direction, guidance and support for work that students undertake independently through:

• finding useful information sources and compiling bibliographies of reading material, in paper and online
• reading and making notes to help make fuller sense of subjects
• engaging with online materials and activities found on the College’s own virtual learning environment
• preparing assignments to practise skills and develop new insights and learning
• preparing for future classes so you can participate fully

In order to develop the skills of a graduate (whether at Foundation Degree or Honours Degree levels), students are expected to not only be able to recall and explain what they know but also to be able to:

• apply what they know to new problems or situations
• analyse information and data and make connections between topics to help make sense of a situation
• synthesise, or draw together, the information and understanding gained from a range of sources, to create new plans or ideas
• evaluate their own work and also the work of others, so that they can judge its value and relevance to a particular problem or situation

Tutors will expect students working towards a Degree to be able to use what they know to solve problems and answer meaningful questions about the way in which aspects of the world work and not just rote-learn information that they have been told or read, for later recall.  This means using all the bullet-pointed skills and to think critically by questioning information, whilst also being rigorous in checking the value of the evidence used in making one’s own points.  Students will be expected to become increasingly responsible for recognising the areas where they themselves need to develop.  Taking careful note of tutor feedback can help to identify the skills and abilities on which attention could usefully be focused. To be successful, students need to be self-motivated to study outside of classes, especially since in higher education, these higher level skills need to be practised independently. 

At Harper Adams students are gradually supported to become less reliant on class-based learning, so that they are able to spend a greater proportion of their time in their final year working on projects of interest to themselves and in line with their future career aspirations.  In the first year of a course, a student has 16 hours contact per week with staff in lectures, seminars, estate/site visits, farm walks etc. In the second years students are given some independent study weeks to enhance their independent learning skills including project work and reading around subject areas.

Harper Adams has an extensive estate and great facilities for students to use as a source of information and inspiration, we also have a well-stocked library and access to countless specialist sources of paper-based and online information.  Many of the staff at Harper Adams are involved in research work, which helps ensure the content of the courses is at the forefront of the discipline.   This also means that amongst the library books and online journals that students use, there may be some familiar names.

The Bamford Library and Faccenda Centre each have spaces in which students can work, either individually or in small groups, using either their own laptop computers or the provided desktop computers, all of which can access the network.  Working spaces are zoned to reflect different working conditions, so there is a study space for everybody, whether they need silence or work better in a livelier environment.