Letter: Surveying's shallow foundations

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors bases its new partnership scheme on teaching quality assessment, the research assessment exercise, entry standards and student employability ("Surveying body in accreditation row", THES, February 16). From the perspective of land surveying, the scheme is deeply flawed.

In England, land surveying was lumped with civil engineering for the last round of TQA. Thus, at Newcastle, East London and University College London, where the land surveying provision is in its own department, TQA had to be carried out jointly with their respective civil engineering departments. In fact, nowhere in the UK is there a separate TQA score for a land surveying provision.

Similarly in the RAE, there is no unit of assessment for land surveying and again research must be lumped into civil engineering, built environment or geography.

Graduating from an accredited programme does not confer chartered status nor membership of the RICS. It merely states that you have passed an accredited programme. That the programme has achieved an appropriate standard is reported on by an external examiner specifically appointed and approved by the RICS.

Conferring chartered status and membership is up to the RICS; in other words, it guards its own gates. In an age when we should be striving for inclusivity and equal opportunity, exit velocity is the only equitable approach to awarding degrees, not entry standards. When students join through alternative access or have low A-level grades, they still have to pass the same final exams. That the RICS should think it is upholding inclusivity and equal opportunity by allowing only up to 25 per cent of a cohort to have fewer than 17 A-level points just shows how out of touch it is with government policy.

All these points were communicated to the RICS during consultation. The policy on entry qualifications is purposefully elitist and in contravention of our mission statement, and until such time as the RICS is again willing to accept output standards we have regretfully had to end 50 years of partnership.

For the RICS to create an "independent review panel" at its meeting of February 12 without communicating to relevant universities the criteria for such a review smacks of a process of continuous agenda change to suit only the RICS and not the wider profession.

Allan Brimicombe Head, School of Surveying University of East London