How are you on BOCA, OSHA, Environmental Engineering, Marketing, Planning & Zoning aspects, obtaing zoning variances, politics in the area, working with utilities and thier engineers, financing projects......I could go on....Point is, you won't get this out of a few books, universities offer degree programs and new grads still are only prepared to assist an established developer.Best thing is to work with one and learn.Many developers were GCs before they started, probably started with a small number of lots and built in phases or got an existing area and built to suit.

Well no I am finishing up my Masters degree and think I will have free time to start doing soem things.

I'm a soon-to-be college graduate from FSU with degrees in both Creative Writing and Classics (as my father puts it, "Pretty Words and Plato"), and I currently own my own web design/marketing company.

IMO it begins with an ethical conduct toward providing a service that employs a high degree of skill and/or knowledge.Seems there is a lack of knowledge that is simply compensated for by a high rate of interest and 5,6 or 10 points in making a loan decission, many seem to care less if the borrower succeeds or fails, so long as they are well secured to ensure the return of thier money with a high profit.

Sure housing can be manipulated to some degree, but it's based more on pure supply demand.

I think your concern is likely justified to a certain degree.

(Heck, throw in marketing and management courses and you've got the functional parts of most business administration degrees.)It always drives me nuts when I see people spend thousands and thousands on expensive real estate 'courses' or 'mentors' when that money could have been spent a lot more productively learning some basic business principles at a local college.

The running joke in my fraternity was that most of the kids were on the 5 year plan - 5 years to get a 4 year degree from a liberal arts school.

So do you think the college degree is worth it?

Not in a bad sense, but realistically, there is a degree of separation between instutional capital and its capital owner.