Hours Spent Shopping Aren’t Wasted: College Offers Degree in Mall Science

Spending time at the mall has been raised to an art form by some high school students, but at Youngstown State University it’s a management science.

The school has just produced its first two graduates in shopping center management, and the trainees are finding a bull market for their specialized skills.

“It was kind of my destiny that I showed up and they had the major,” said Tracey Farley, a former administrative assistant to a Virginia shopping mall manager and one of the first to earn a mall degree.

“Ever since I started at the mall in Virginia Beach, I knew shopping malls were never going to die,” said Farley, 24, who worked 2 1/2 years for mall developer Melvin Simon & Associates.

Few Mall Scholars

The study of malls--and how to run them--leads to a bachelor of science degree in business administration at Youngstown.

Before the university started the program, shopping center management was mostly taught in seminars offered to established shopping mall developers by the International Council of Shopping Centers, said Don Pendley, spokesman for the group.

“This is a major move by a school. There aren’t many institutions that talk about shopping malls at all,” said Pendley.

The industry has had three years of record growth with 21 regional malls of at least 400,000 square feet--each the size of 10 football fields--built last year, Pendley said. Overall, he said, construction began on 1,846 new shopping centers last year.

Pendley said the council is helping develop training programs for graduate students at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

“They’re looking for somebody to professionalize the development and management of centers, in this case,” he said.

Youngstown State’s involvement in training shopping mall managers began in 1985 when developers offered to help train managers for the growing field, said E. Terry Diederick, a business professor who directs the shopping center major.

“They’ve been very supportive and they’ve been a major source of expertise. They’ve served as lecturers and have been very helpful in placing our students,” he said.

Among those offering to help train the students were the locally based Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. and the Cafaro Corp.--two of the country’s largest shopping center developers.

The major, which has attracted 25 students this year, requires business school students to take courses in the history and planning of retail sales, shopping center operations and problems surrounding development, Diederick said.

He said students are also required to work at internships with developers.

“We draw on property management concepts that aren’t really talked about in other courses,” said Diederick in describing what sets the course apart from other business programs.

“A mall is much like a city, and they have to have a lot of those skills,” the professor said.

Among the topics students explore are police science, engineering and traffic control, Diederick said.

“The shopping center industry has grown dramatically and it has gotten to the point that education has to be specific to that industry,” said John Richley, director of operations for Cafaro.

Several Job Offers

About 55% of all retail dollars spent in the United States last year went to stores in shopping malls, Pendley said. He said that with that figure growing at half a percent a year, the council projects sharply increased demand from shopping center owners for trained managers.

Farley, for instance, said she is weighing job offers from Melvin Simon, DeBartolo and Cafaro, as well as several other shopping center developers. And she said that until other business schools start to copy Youngstown State’s program, she doesn’t expect much competition for the jobs she wants.

“Right now during this period there is no way you can get a view of what the industry is about in any other classroom setting,” she said.