There are a number of ways to get real estate education, but which is the best investment?
You could choose to go to college and earn a degree in real estate, even going as far as earning your masters from universities like Cornell. However this type of real estate education notoriously means spending years of intense study while spending money while you watch many of the most profitable deals slip by. Almost all education is good, but especially given the current market do you want to spend the next 2 to 6 years spending tens of thousands of dollars for a mediocre real estate education while others are making tens of thousands a month or more flipping houses? Worse, a recent study showed that the majority of college students learn virtually nothing new in the first 2-3 years! Of course even when you do start learning in this type of environment most of what you will be learning is often not the practical skills you need for active real estate investing.
Then you have the option of attending a local licensing course for your real estate education. This may be the cheapest road to learning more about real estate for the complete newbies, ranging between a few hundred to a $1,000 on average. However, again you are looking at a source of real estate education that is strictly designed for passing the state licensing exam and while the legal knowledge is useful it is unlikely you will use 90% of it once you start actively investing. Not to mention you will probably not learn anything about making offers, marketing yourself or flipping homes.
Your third choice is to select a well put together real estate investment course from someone else who has already been incredible successful in the industry. Prices vary slightly, but even spending a couple thousand on a real estate education that will teach you real systems that are working in this market and have been producing tens of thousands of dollars in just a single deal for others clearly provides a huge return on your investment. Just make sure you choose a real estate investing education course that is up to date and from someone who is still actively making money in real estate, not just from selling books.