Graduate construction management programs in the U.S.: Lessons learned from leading institutions

KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering (2013) 17(7):1664-1671

Copyright ⓒ2013 Korean Society of Civil Engineers

DOI 10.1007/s12205-013-0493-8

− 1664 −

Information Technology

pISSN 1226-7988, eISSN 1976-3808

www.springer.com/12205

Graduate Construction Management Programs in the U.S.:

Lessons Learned from Leading Institutions

Sangwook Lee*, Afshin Esmaeilzadeh**, and Dong-Eun Lee***

Received October 1, 2012/Accepted January 30, 2013

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Abstract

Graduate programs in construction can be designed to incorporate a broad range of subjects, including construction management,construction engineering, and other management subjects. However, few studies were performed previously on the graduate educationin construction management and the operation of graduate programs. Thus, a study is necessary to evaluate current constructionmanagement programs at the graduate level before discussing how to develop them further. This study aims at identifying leadingconstruction management programs in the US by using a relevant ranking method and investigating how they manage and operategraduate programs in universities. The authors have developed a survey questionnaire to identify overall facts regarding graduateprogram management. The major findings obtained from surveying 16 schools are illustrated and explained in detail in this paper.The results obtained from the survey are expected to provide useful information to a practical side as well as an academic side. Theybecome an important asset if a university has a plan to launch a new construction graduate program or there are some schools thatintend to reflect their current situations by comparing with other peer institutions. For a practical purpose, they will provide usefulinformation to people considering construction as their higher degrees.

Keywords: construction management, graduate education, graduate program, and online survey

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1. Introduction

Construction is one of the most essential industries in the

United States (US) and a critical asset in helping the country

succeed in a globally competitive market. Construction engineers

today are faced with challenges and opportunities in planning,

designing, building, and managing public and private facilities to

meet the needs of society. Nowadays, the society relies heavily

on the construction industry for building commercial and industrial

facilities for business, civil infrastructure for public and private

needs, and housing for residents (Russell et al., 2007).

The history of Construction Engineering and Management (CEM)

education closely follows the emergence of the construction

industry as an economic force in the U.S. (Chinowsky and Diekmann

2004). The CEM education was built upon the fundamentals of

civil engineering. Most programs offer a variety of courses in

construction technology and management philosophy along with

courses from other disciplines to strengthen students’ knowledge

and skills from different perspectives. Furthermore, construction

management education focuses on the entire life cycle of a project.

This includes initial planning, design, site construction, occupancy

and maintenance, condition assessment, retrofit and renovation,

or removal. Although the CEM education was founded upon

civil engineering, it has been expanded to other related areas

such as architectural engineering and engineering technology as

demand for the construction education has been increased. While

construction program titles are a little bit different between schools,

they are named as ‘CEM’ in this paper as a collective term.

From the historical perspective, Texas A&M University was a

pioneer in establishing Construction management as an engineering

discipline in 1946. Subsequently, University of Mississippi, Stanford

University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology established

their own programs. The opening of a construction management

community was launched with two common aims: (1) Recognition

as a discipline and (2) Survival as a formal engineering field of

academic studies (Ledbetter, 1985). Since the construction academic

community began to form, the progress from the basic to the

advanced has been an important issue that construction education

should overcome (Oglesby, 1982; Jortberg and Haggard, 1993).

The key questions were whether construction engineering and

management could be considered as a true academic pursuit and

the field that could develop proper research activities along with

an academic degree. Further, these activities could support professors

embarking on a research and teaching career. However, the answer

*Assistant Professor, Dept. of Construction Engineering and Engineering Technology, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas 79409, USA (Correspond-

ing Author, E-mail: [email protected])

**Graduate Student, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas 79409, USA (E-mail: [email protected])

***Member, Associate Professor, School of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 702-701, Korea (E-mail:

[email protected])

Graduate Construction Management Programs in the U.S.: Lessons Learned from Leading Institutions

Vol. 17, No. 7 / November 2013 − 1665 −

to these questions did not emerge until several construction

educators such as Clarkson Oglesby at Stanford, E. I. Brown at

North Carolina State, and Glen Alt at University of Michigan

convinced both the academic and professional communities that

construction not only deserved to be a specialty within civil

engineering, but the body of knowledge was advanced enough to

establish graduate degrees in the construction discipline (Ledbetter,

1985). The early 1960s, thereafter, observed the beginning of a

graduate construction engineering and management program in a

few schools, including University of Michigan, Iowa State University,

and North Carolina State University (Harris, 1992).

Although only a few universities had programs, the 1960s and

the 1970s witnessed a steady increase in engineering-based

programs until over 40 programs existed by the start of the 1980s

(Oglesby, 1990). In 2004, there were 120 full-time faculties in

civil engineering-based construction programs distributed among

52 universities in the U.S. However, construction is again being

challenged by funding agencies, universities, and professionals

as to its relevance and ability to compete in a rigorous academic

engineering environment (Chinowsky and Diekmann, 2004).

Although construction education at the university level has

been advanced significantly since World War II in which construction

industry experienced a shortage of skilled individuals to manage

projects, construction research has been sluggish in development

(Oglesby, 1990). He mentioned that industry support for construction

research was minimal since it tended to take a short-run, profit-

oriented approach to expenditures. A long-term research without

specific payoffs received little support from the industry. Harris

(1992) stated that construction research has lost connection between

contractors and researchers and must restore it if construction

graduate programs are to survive in universities. He emphasized

the necessity by listing a few reasons: (1) Researchers need the

industry to learn what needs to be researched, (2) Industry is necessary

to increase the level of realism to research, (3) Construction

faculty needs to be educated from the industry since professors

have become isolated from construction fields, and (4) More

research on construction process should be performed, rather

than construction management, e.g. the involvement of computers.

Oberlender (1984) presented a mechanism to establish regional

research centers for construction to serve as the links between

needs and researchers and between researchers and users. The

centers need to be placed at strategic locations to identify

research needs promptly, conduct research, and transfer research

results to users. Recently, a deep discussion on construction research

was made by Jahren and Johnston (2011). They mentioned that a

much larger portion of construction research currently is performed

in construction management topics, rather than construction

engineering topics. This situation was reversed in the early stage

of construction research. Because of limited funding situations in

construction, researchers have turned their directions to research

topics that require little or no significant funding. They emphasized

that construction engineering research should be expanded to

regain the balance between two topics. They suggested that

researchers make an effort to find research opportunities in the

improvement of construction process standards and specifications

at the local, state, and national levels.

Regarding the analysis of research trends, Lakmazaheri and

Rasdorf (1998) reported the results of the analysis of the Journal

of Computing in Civil Engineering from 1987 to 1996. They

examined research trends on computing tools and techniques in

civil engineering from the first ten-year publications, 271 technical

papers in total. They identified the number of main contributing

authors, their yearly contributions, and their organizations. They

analyzed home countries of the authors. In addition, they identified

main computing areas according to civil engineering sub-disciplines.

More than half of the papers were published in the area of expert

systems, software engineering and development, artificial intelligence,

and neural networks. A similar research was conducted by

Abudayyeh et al. (2004). They provided a historical perspective

on construction research trends as reflected in the Journal of

Construction Engineering and Management. They analyzed

total 879 technical papers published from 1985 to 2002. They

identified that 1,032 authors were involved in the publications

during the period and 86% of them appeared once or twice in the

journal. They investigated representing countries of authors and

their institutions. They found that the top construction research topics

were scheduling, productivity, constructability, simulation, planning,

and safety.

Despite the increased number of graduate programs and students

in CEM, not many studies were performed previously on graduate

education in CEM and few facts were known about how to

operate graduate programs in an academic setting. Most previous

studies in this regard were performed largely based on the study

of graduate program curriculums. Arditi and Polat (2010) published

a paper on graduate education in construction management by

reviewing 41 Master programs in the U.S. They found that the

Master programs investigated were not different so much from

each other in terms of course contents. And, six categories of

courses were commonly found in the course categories, which

are contract administration, project management, scheduling,

equipment management, construction technology, and research.

Yepes et al. (2012) designed a model for developing a Benchmark

Indicator (BI) to assess management and administration capacity

at the graduate level. The this end, they developed a model, called

the Management and Administration in Construction (MAC2),

composed of two dimensions, a life cycle level and an organizational

breakdown level. And each level consists of four elements. They

selected 23 Master programs from worldwide as leading institutions,

and analyzed their courses and syllabi to evaluate the level of

matching with the developed model. The BI does not determine

which program is superior or inferior, but only allows a comparison

between each program and the average. Pellicer et al. (2013) is the

extension study of a previous work by Yepes et al. (2012). They

attempted to devise quantitative metrics to the developed model

previously. They introduced two indicators: A Completeness

Index (CI) and an Adequacy Index (AI). The CI evaluates the

extent to which a program covers the discipline of construction

management, and the AI measures how a program covers market

Sangwook Lee, Afshin Esmaeilzadeh, and Dong-Eun Lee

− 1666 − KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering

demands identified by the Spanish Association of Civil Engineers.

They showed an applicability of the developed model by comparing

the same leading institutions used previously.

While these studies provide useful information on the graduate

education, there is an inherent limitation on the studies because

data collection limited to course curriculums and heavily relied

on internet search. Literature search demonstrated that there is a

need to investigate current situations of CEM graduate programs

in the US by developing a wide range of survey questions.

Consequently, this became the main objective of this study, i.e. to

evaluate construction management graduate programs by addressing

more practical and broader facts on the management of programs.

This study attempted to identify leading institutions by employing a

ranking method first and then, use a survey questionnaire, investigating

how they manage and operate graduate programs. The findings

obtained from the survey are explained and illustrated in detail in

this paper. This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes

research methodology to explain the way of developing a survey

questionnaire and selecting top leading schools. Section 3 presents

the process of survey questionnaire. Section 4 lists the results

obtained from the survey, and, Section 5 draws conclusions.

2. Research Methodology

2.1 Development of Survey Questionnaire

This study was initiated to investigate the overall quality of

existing CEM graduate programs across the nation. To achieve

the objective, a number of questions related to this research

needed to be identified and put into survey questionnaire carefully.

A questionnaire was designed to collect information from someone

holding a higher administrative position such as a department

chair or a graduate student advisor to ask a wide range of survey

questions regarding graduate program operations. In order to

develop a well-prepared survey questionnaire, the authors studied

various related materials, including previous research works on

construction management education, survey methods and major

criteria used by US News and World Report, and major graduate

program indexes monitored by Texas Tech. Also, an Associate

Dean in the College of Engineering at Texas Tech reviewed a

draft survey questionnaire and presented valuable comments to

finalize a survey form. As a result, a wide range of questions

regarding the operation of CEM program were accommodated in

the survey such as the number of graduate students, recent number

of enrollments, the number of faculties, the level of accepted

students, the research funding amount, and so on. The questionnaire

consisted of five major categories: (1) background information,

(2) number of graduate students and faculties, (3) the level of

accepted students and their different options to seek a master

degree, (4) financial resources for graduate students, and (5)

external research funding amount.

The last factor considered for the design of a survey was a time

factor. A department chair or a graduate student advisor who was

supposed to respond to this questionnaire is typically pretty busy

and tends not to be involved in the time-consuming survey.

Therefore, the authors tried to keep the number of questions to a

reasonable level so that each survey can be filled out within an

hour. Most questions were designed to insert simple figures in a

given box or type a minimum level of writing.

2.2 Selection of Ranking Method

International reputation and position of universities are influenced

considerably by published rankings. High ranking universities

will ‘advertise’ their positions in the school rankings to prove their

graduate education quality. Van Raan (2005) indicated that

academic rankings have a great impact on the worldwide academic

landscape.

This research aims to collect information from the top leading

institutions in CEM across the nation. There are different ranking

methods and criteria to list universities from the best to the worst.

Therefore, it is important to identify a reliable ranking source

appropriate to the purpose of this research. Ranking indicators

may include alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields

Medals, highly cited researchers, articles published in Nature and

Science, articles indexed in Science Citation Index-Expanded

(SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), academic

performance with respect to the size of an institution and the

percentage of students and staff recruited internationally (Liu and

Cheng, 2005). There are various opinions on which factors should

be considered to develop school rankings, and there is no perfect

indicator in the world. Van Raan (2005) showed that the

indicators used for ranking are often not advanced enough, and this

situation is part of the broader problem of the application of

insufficiently developed indicators used by persons who do not

have clear competence and experience in the field of quantitative

studies of science.

Considering that there are many ideas around the university

ranking and its criteria, it is necessary to identify a trustable

reference for this research project. Despite some limitations that

every ranking method contains, US News rankings were selected

for this research project. US News & World Report (USNWR)

has been in existence since the early 1980s and has received a

wide recognition in the North America (Griffith and Rask,

2007). USNWR rankings are important to prospective students

since this information makes the search process more efficient

and less costly. The rankings are important for college and

university administrators because they partly define the institution’s

market niche, influence the perception of the institution by

prospective students, which affects enrollments and operating

budgets, and serve as a guide to the institution’s strategic planning.

The USNWR rankings are also important to college recruiters

who use the rankings to allocate recruitment budgets (Webster,

2001).

USNWR publishes the best engineering schools every year in

terms of an entire college of engineering and an engineering

department in a specific area. They do not publish specific school

rankings on construction management, but there is a close

ranking available for this research, which is the ranking for the

best engineering schools in civil engineering. The selection of the


Vol. 17, No. 7 / November 2013 − 1667 −

ranking is reasonable since construction management programs

originated from civil engineering and a lot of graduate programs

are currently located under civil engineering departments.

2.3 Selection of Leading Institutions

From the ranking for the best engineering schools in civil

engineering, universities within top 100 ranking were chosen as

a leading institution in this project. The next step was to investigate

whether the schools have CEM programs at the graduate level.

For this task, the websites of the universities were visited one by

one and phones or e-mails were used in some cases when a

website search was not enough. One main concern through this

task was that CEM programs are not always located under civil

engineering. Some schools like Texas A&M and University of

Florida provide two CEM programs under the same roof, one

under civil engineering and the other one under a separate

department. In this kind of case, the authors decided to include

both programs in the survey list only if they maintain a graduate

program. Even if some CEM programs are located out of civil

engineering, they are assumed to maintain a comparable reputation

and capacity with civil engineering.

After a careful filtering process, it was found that the number

of CEM graduate programs is 59 across the nation in 52 universities

among top 100 universities. Fig. 1 shows the distribution of

CEM graduate programs according to their rankings. It should be

noted that around half of the leading universities provide

graduate education programs in CEM in their schools. Regarding

the location of programs, 39 programs are under civil engineering

departments and the remaining 20 programs belong to other

colleges or independent schools.

3. Process of Survey Questionnaire

In this project, survey responses were collected through an

online survey and the survey participation was solicited by

sending an e-mail individually. The technology for online survey

research is relatively young and evolving. In its initial stage,

creating and conducting an online survey was a time-consuming

task requiring familiarity with web authoring programs. Recently

developed survey authoring software packages and online survey

services make online survey research much easier and faster.

Major advantages include the access to individuals in distant

locations, the ability to reach survey participants difficult to

contact, and the convenience of having automated data collection

(Wright, 2005).

The Qualtrics, survey-creation software, was used in this research

because it is easy to create both quantitative and qualitative

questions, and the tool is provided to school faculties for free.

The software has the ability to store responses automatically and

show the respondent’s Internet Protocol (IP) address which is

useful to prove the validity of responses in case a respondent

failed to reveal his/her name and e-mail address. Fig, 2 shows a

snapshot of survey questionnaire created on-line.

The surveys were e-mailed out on August 1, 2011 to total 59

people in all leading universities. Since most respondents spend

a busy semester while performing teaching, research and other

Fig. 1. Distribution of CEM Programs

Fig. 2. Screenshot of Survey Questionnaire

Fig. 3. Distribution of Survey Responses



services, this research required careful monitoring and tracking

after the survey distribution. Notifications by e-mail and phone

were sent out to them around every 10 days during the collection

period to remind and encourage them to participate in the survey.

Survey responses were collected until the end of October in the

same year. With every effort to increase a response rate by making

phone calls and sending e-mails regularly, total 16 responses

were received by the time, representing a 27% response rate.

Figure 3 presents the distribution of survey participants in terms

of school rankings. As shown in the table, response distributions

are fairly well balanced, having at least two schools in each

ranking group.

4. Analysis and Results

This section presents major findings obtained from the survey

questionnaire and discusses them one by one.

4.1 Background Information

The first part of the survey questionnaire is dedicated to the

general basic information on the selected schools and respondents.

This part included questions such as the age of a CEM program, the

position of respondents, and contact information. All survey

responses were received from higher-level people in their

department, which increases the credibility of survey results (see

Table 1).

Table 2 presents how long CEM programs have existed in the

schools. The majority of respondents answered that they operated

the programs for a long time, i.e. more than 30 years, and only

two programs are categorized as less than 10 years. Seven surveyed

programs out of 16 are placed under civil engineering and the

rest nine programs are located out of civil engineering.

Next question in the background section was the current

number of CEM students at undergraduate and graduate levels.

To present survey results hereinafter, five important descriptive

statistics were created based on available responses. These values

include minimum (Min), maximum (Max), average (Avg), median

(Med), and standard deviation (SD). Table 3 shows the student

numbers at undergraduate and graduate levels based on 13 and

16 available responses.

It was found that there is a severe difference in size between

undergraduate and graduate programs. Average number of

graduate students is 31.7, which is 11% out of average number

of undergraduate students. It is worth mentioning that, according

to Atalah and Muchemedzi (2006), CEM undergraduate students

are not interested to continue their education toward a higher level.

Rather, they prefer to gain practical experience in a construction

field after graduation and are less likely to go back to school to

seek higher degrees.

4.2 Number of Graduate Students

It is important for CEM faculty members to be aware of the

population of students that make up graduate programs in other

universities. This part of survey was designed to disclose the

number of enrolled students in the last two years, 2009 and 2010.

From this information, it will be possible to estimate the number of

future graduate students. In addition, this statistics can be used to

explore the challenges and opportunities that each university may

encounter in enrollment. Thus, assessing accurate number of

enrolled students from other universities will offer insights into

precise views about the future growth of graduate programs. Tables

4 and 5 present the number of graduate students enrolled in recent

two years based on 14 and 9 available responses, respectively.

Enrollment numbers in two consecutive years show a pretty

similar pattern in all statistical numbers. Average numbers of

master students for two years are pretty much the same, 30.8 and

31.2, but, average numbers of Ph.D. students are increased

slightly from 6.0 in 2009 to 7.8 in 2010. This may imply that the

size of graduate programs or the number of students seeking a

higher degree is stabilized in most schools. From the average

numbers, the ratio of master students to doctoral students can be

estimated around 4.5:1.

Moreover, the number of degrees awarded in the last two years

was examined to figure out how many students holding a master

or a doctoral degree are generated each year. All statistical

Table 2. Age of CEM Programs

Year Less than

1011 to 20 21 to 30

More than 30

Total

Number 2 1 2 11 16

Table 1. Positions of Respondents

Position Number Position Number

Department chair 4 Program head 4

Graduate student adviser 5 Senior faculty in the program 3

Total 16

Table 3. Number of CEM Students

Level Min Max Avg Med SD

Undergraduate Student 20 621 278.3 175 230.2

Graduate Student 5 110 31.7 27 26.1

Table 4. Enrollment Number of Master Students

Year Min Max Avg Med SD

2009 4 80 30.8 25 24.3

2010 5 110 31.2 25 27.8

Table 5. Enrollment Number of Doctoral Students


2009 0 20 6.0 5 6.1

2010 0 20 7.8 6 5.7


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numbers are presented in the Tables 6 and 7 which were prepared

based on 12 and 10 available responses. The number of master

degree recipients for two years is around 10.5 on average and the

number of doctoral degree recipients for two years is around 1.5

on average. It is worth mentioning that, in the case of master

degrees, the number was fairly well distributed over the schools

participating in the survey. But, in the case of doctoral degrees,

most degrees were granted by higher-ranking schools. This implies

that doctoral students are more sensitive to school rankings than

master students when they choose a school.

4.3 Number of Faculty

The number of faculty and their ranks are important factors to

evaluate an academic program. The quality and productivity of

graduate programs will be improved a lot if the faculty is

sufficiently secured. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the

number of faculty according to different ranks. Table 8 shows

the number of faculty in each rank based on 16 responses.

There is an average of two professors positioned in the associate

and assistant professor ranks. An average of a full professor

position is 1.4, which is a little bit lower than other faculty

groups. Five schools reported that they have no full professors

in their programs.

The ratio of full-time to part-time faculty was calculated and

shown in Table 9 to figure out the degree of dependence on part-

time faculty. High-ratio number means that most of education

work is performed by full-time faculty. Ten out of 16 programs

showed a high-ratio number, more than four. Two schools have a

ratio number less than 1, which means that the group of part-time

faculty is larger than that of full-time faculty.

4.4 Level of Accepted Students

Universities have various criteria to accept students based on

their policies. Furthermore, some departments impose higher specific

standards for educational proficiency than other departments.

But, there are some commonly used criteria required by most

universities such as Graduate Record Examination (GRE) score

and Grade Point Average (GPA). These numbers play an important

role when measuring academic ability of prospective students

and evaluating the level of accepted students in each institution.

Based on the analysis of 12 available responses, it was found

that most schools employ 3.0 out of 4.0 as a minimum GPA score.

The highest minimum GPA score is 3.3 out of 4.0 indicated by

one school. Regarding GRE scores, most of the schools require

applicants to achieve from 1,000 to 1,100 scores as a minimum,

which is the sum of verbal and quantitative parts. It is worth

mentioning that three programs do not employ a specific minimum

GRE or GPA score to accept students at the graduate level. It

seems that they accept graduate students out of application pools,

without setting up a specific minimum score.

4.5 Master Degree Options

The majority of construction management graduate programs

provide students with multiple options to get a higher degree.

Commonly employed options include writing a thesis or a project

report, and taking only courses. These options to receive a master

degree were created to meet the needs of master students with

various purposes. Table 10 presents the percentage of graduate

program options that were offered based on 16 available responses.

As shown in the table, writing a thesis option is the most commonly

used format, but the other two options, writing a report and taking

courses only, are also popularly employed by graduate programs.

Table 11 shows the distribution of number of options based on 16

responses. It is worth mentioning that most universities maintain

at least two options to choose as a degree plan. Only three programs

reported that they offer only one choice.

4.6 Students’ Funding Sources

Financial issue is one of the most important factors when

Table 6. Number of Master Degrees Awarded


2009 3 20 10.3 8 6.5

2010 3 20 10.6 9 6.6

Table 7. Number of Doctoral Degrees Awarded


2009 0 6 1.7 1 2.1

2010 0 6 1.5 1 2.1

Table 8. Number of Faculties and Instructors

Rank Min Max Avg Med SD

Professor 0 4 1.4 1 1.3

Associate Professor 0 8 1.9 1.5 1.9

Assistant Professor 0 5 2.1 2 1.8

Others (e.g., Adjunct positions) 0 15 2.4 1 3.8

Table 9. Ratio of Full-Time to Part-Time Faculties

Ratio Number of Schools

No part-time faculty 5

5 or more 4

4 to 5 1

1 to 2 4

Less than 1 2

Total 16

Table 10. Percentage of Different Options (%)

Options ThesisOption

ProjectReport

Taking CoursesOnly

Others

Percentage 88 50 50 18

Table 11. Distribution of Number of Options

Number of Options Number of Programs

3 4

2 9

1 3

Total 16



people holding a baccalaureate consider a higher-level academic

degree. Insufficient financial support may significantly influence

the enrollment of graduate students. Thus, it is important to

examine the funding sources of graduate students pursuing their

degrees. Table 12 presents the percentage of funding sources based

on 16 available responses.

As shown in the table, it is somewhat surprising that around

half of graduate students pay tuition by themselves. This will

create a significant financial burden to students, considering their

living expenses and other fees such as a health insurance and

books. The opportunities to receive scholarship from the outside

source or a school seem to be very limited as indicated by the

extremely low number of average and median. Another way to

receive a financial support is to become a Teaching Assistant

(TA) or a Research Assistant (RA). However, it seems that there

are limited possibilities to get this position as well. The average

number of TA funding is 13.3% and the average number of RA

funding is 25.9%. It is expected that funding amount for TA will

decrease for the next several years due to a bad economic

condition and significant budget cuts experienced by most state

universities. Since the majority of CEM graduate programs are

based in public universities, the funding amount for TA is likely

to be reduced. In the case of RA funding, this money typically

goes to doctoral students first since they have more knowledge

and longer educational period. Ehrenberg (2011) mentioned that

Ph.D. students have more chances to enjoy a variety of financial

supports during the time as a doctoral student. These supports

include RA, TA, or various fellowships. By considering that the

majority of graduate students are composed of master students, it

can be concluded that most master students do not receive any

financial support until they receive a degree.

4.7 External Research Funding

This section examines the capacity of external research funding in

the last two years in order to evaluate the degree of research

efforts to bring more money into a school. More research funding

amount will also make a positive impact on the number of graduate

students and school ranking. Survey respondents were asked to

estimate external research funding amount for the last two years

and select one category among six categories (zero to $250,000,

$250,000 to $500,000, $500,000 to $750,000, $750,000 to $1

million, $1 million to $1.5 million, and more than $1.5 million).

Figure 4 presents survey results in a bar chart based on 16 available

responses. As shown in the figure, research funding amount in

two years does not show much difference, while funding amount

in 2010 looks a little bit better. Few schools indicated that their

research funding amount was more than $1 million, and the

dominating research funding category in CEM is zero to $250,000.

Lastly, the respondents were asked to present their opinions

about the growth of graduate programs in terms of size in the

near future. They answered on a five-level scale ranging from

strongly agree to strongly disagree, based on their best judgment.

Table 13 shows the distribution of experts’ judgments based on

16 responses. Half of respondents indicated that they are neutral

about the possibility of further growth of graduate programs.

They furnished some reasons, for example, poor economy conditions

and lower job opportunities after graduation. Six people are

optimistic about the growth of graduate programs. It should be

noted that the number of negative responses is only two out of 16.

5. Conclusions

This paper was to evaluate current construction management

programs at the graduate level to acquire a wide range of information

on graduate education. Online survey tool was employed to make

Table 12. Various Funding Resources (%)

Funding Source Min Max Avg Med SD

TA 0 40 13.3 10 11.7

RA 0 80 25.9 22.5 23.7

Scholarship from a school 0 25 4.1 0 8.0

Scholarship from the outside 0 40 5.9 0 11.3

Self-support 5 100 41.0 40 27.0

Others 5 50 3.7 0 12.6

Fig. 4. External Research Funding Amount

Table 13. Personal Opinions about Future Growth

Answers Number

Strongly agree 3

Agree 3

Neutral 8

Disagree 1

Strongly disagree 1

Total 16


Vol. 17, No. 7 / November 2013 − 1671 −

survey tasks including design, distribution, monitoring, and

collection, organized and streamlined. The major findings obtained

from this study can be listed as follows.

1. The number of graduate students is fairly low, 11% of the num-

ber of undergraduate students. Considering that international

students take a big portion of graduate programs, most domestic

undergraduate students are not likely to attend a graduate

school.

2. The number of master and doctoral students seemed to be

stabilized based on the statistics in 2009 and 2010.

3. The majority of schools indicated that their construction

education is performed mostly by full-time faculty rather than

part-time faculty.

4. Around half of graduate students do not receive a financial

support during their graduate study. It means that the expan-

sion of scholarship opportunities should be considered in

order to attract more students to a graduate program.

5. External research funding amount in CEM does not show

much difference in two years, 2009 and 2010. The dominat-

ing research funding category is zero to $250,000.

The findings of this research inspired a few more research

ideas to be studied following this project.

1. Firstly, most undergraduate students do not try to achieve a

higher degree after they get a bachelor degree. This was also

confirmed by the low percentage of graduate students. A further

study is needed to investigate the perception of undergraduate

students regarding a construction management master degree.

2. Another idea is to study how construction companies view

graduate students. A further study is necessary to identify

whether construction companies put more values on graduate

programs in construction management as opposed to under-

graduate programs.

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Documents

Graduate construction management programs in the U.S.: Lessons learned from leading institutions