Has TAF or the States Screwed Up Education?

[Terrel L. Shields]

Seems that from allowing any instructor to teach courses under approval at no cost, states are now requiring not only the instructor and course be vetted individually but that fees be paid. Great. So it eventually means that few will be able to afford to teach outside the borders of their states. Further, with some states having several schools, the average student count for smaller schools for qualifying ed is now 3 - 6 students - too few to make the school worth it.

This means fewer choices for appraisers and more travel to get an education. It means instructors of unique courses are unlikely to be able to afford to teach. If faced with paying $500 for a good unique and meaningful 7 hr course or taking a worthless course the average appraiser simply has to take the dud course for $190 to avoid the expense considering the lousy pay of the average appraiser.

Instead of improving education, new rules are impeding it.

If it takes 100 hours to prepare a course and write a text book, then an appraiser who is paid $500 per day to teach has to teach the class at least 10 times just to break even. To make any money perhaps 30 times. These rules makes it near impossible to teach for a profit outside a few pat courses that are dominated by the 2 or 3 largest organizations. It means that specialties like ag business, motel valuation, minerals, timber, etc. will never be taught.

 

[Don Clark]

Seems that from allowing any instructor to teach courses under approval at no cost, states are now requiring not only the instructor and course be vetted individually but that fees be paid. Great. So it eventually means that few will be able to afford to teach outside the borders of their states. Further, with some states having several schools, the average student count for smaller schools for qualifying ed is now 3 - 6 students - too few to make the school worth it.

This means fewer choices for appraisers and more travel to get an education. It means instructors of unique courses are unlikely to be able to afford to teach. If faced with paying $500 for a good unique and meaningful 7 hr course or taking a worthless course the average appraiser simply has to take the dud course for $190 to avoid the expense considering the lousy pay of the average appraiser.Quote

Terrell,

You have hit on the primary reason that there are not more courses available unless you have a very large organization with fairly deep pockets to put together and offer the courses.

Also, with the advent of the 2008 criteria, the pre-license courses at almost all schools are dead. I hear from instructors from around the country, and the same thing is true for almost all schools. The school where I teach has not been able to do a single pre-license course this year. If the point was to trim the herd, they sure found a good way to do that. But, in 5-10 years with very, very few new licensees coming into the business the herd may be thinner than they intended.

My state is one of the few that does not require pre approval of a course or an instructor for CE except for the USPAP courses. But other states often require large fees for approval of both course and instructor. That is one of the reasons why more and better courses are not being offered.
Instead of improving education, new rules are impeding it.

 

[farmguy]

I may be way out of the loop on this but from what I understand it had gotten to where any one could dream up a course and teach, and some of what was getting taught frankly was crap.

I believe the intent is to eliminate the $190 dud course. I don't know if the method to achieve that goal is the best, but the level of education of the average appraiser is pretty poor. This forum is a prime example. I read some of the questions from certified appraisers and wonder how they ever passed an exam. Obviously the test was too easy and there were too many "take this course to pass the exam test" courses out there. We need more quality "how you appraise" classes and less "pass the test" classes.