CQUniversity property program academics Ian Clarkson and Adjunct Professor Terry Boyd recently made a reciprocal visit to the University of the Philippines Open University, to continue assistance with establishing a new property valuation program.

The program is part of a wider push to bring order and certainty to the Philippines' property ownership system.

Representatives from the Philippines visited CQUniversity in 2009 in the early stages of establishing their program. The recent visit by the Australians was part of the new program's quality asurance stage.

"Terry and I assisted with completion of modules and some Quality Assurance work," Mr Clarkson said.

"Whilst we were there they celebrated the 15^th anniversary of the UPOU and also had a launch of the new course with the Philippines' Finance Secretary, with World Bank, Land Administration and Management Project (LAMP) and Australian consular representatives in attendance," Mr Clarkson said.

Terry Boyd (centre) and Ian Clarkson (second from right) in the main photo during their recent visit to The PhilippinesThe new course is one of the outcomes of LAMP http://www.phil-lamp.org/ . This project was initiated by the Philippines Government about 8 years ago, in conjunction with the World Bank, in an attempt to establish a basic land tenure, cadastre, valuation system and real estate licensing, to sort out a system that was widely open to corruption and mismanagement.

As part of LAMP, a tender was put out to all Philippine universities to provide a teaching platform to train government assessors and private appraisers (what we in Australia call property valuers).  This tender was won by the University of the Philippines Open University (a distance education university) http://www.upou.edu.ph/.

A world tender was then called for universities to assist in providing information to the UPOU to write these courses.  CQUniversity won this stage against other Australian and New Zealand universities, mainly because we also teach our students via Flexible Learning.

In May/June 2009, 6 academics and 2 industry representatives travelled from the Philippines to Australia and spent 4 weeks with CQUniversity staff in Rockhampton and Brisbane.

They were able to familiarise themselves with our courses and teaching priorities while beginning to prepare their own programs.

Adjunct Professor Terry Boyd has been the project leader from the CQUniversity end, including the Advanced Valuation subjects and overall management. Ian Clarkson has assisted with the Introduction to Valuation and Property & Asset Management courses; Tom Coe with Statutory Valuation; Terry Boyd and Kaye Clarke with Built Environment; and Kristy Richardson and Lawson Smith with Property Law.

There are the 6 main subjects to be offered initially, although future funding could warrant a further Agricultural Valuation subject if it becomes available later this year.