Land Administration Master's Programme Mission Revisited

Abstract

Less than a quarter of the countries in the world maintain a complete land administration system. Conventional land titling programs appear incapable of bridging the gap; they fail to support the provision of a minimum form of land tenure security – for all the citizens, including vulnerable ones. Land administration is one of six specializations within the Master of Science in Geo-information Science and Earth Observation taught at Faculty of geo-information science and earth observation (ITC), University of Twente, the Netherlands. In order to provide an up-to-date course programme, based on the most recent trends and developments, our course is periodically reviewed and improved. The review is usually based on the survey with our alumni, information from key specialists and latest developments in the in the land administration domain based on literature (e.g. books, scientific journal papers, conference proceedings). For our last review of the curriculum of our land administration programme we added an extra step as we experienced difficulties in getting our review process well started. In a series of workshops with all staff involved (professors, lecturers, post docs and PhD researchers) we decided to first define the mission and vision statements for our land administration domain. The following (re-) defined mission and vision statements resulted from our joint effort and common agreement, and will guide further curriculum review and improvement: Our vision is land tenure security for all. This aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 1.4. that seeks to ensure that ‘all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to and ownership and control over land and other forms of property’ by 2030. We respond with our mission to provide education, research, and capacity development in responsible land administration, to develop land administration capacity rooted in cadastral intelligence, and to create change agen