The Nation's C-Schools: Undergraduate construction programs raise skills and expectations, but face own challenges ahead

Twenty-five years after the first college-level program earned legitimacy through accreditation, construction education is feeling the highs and lows of maturity. A discipline that not many ever thought could be an academic subject now is offered at as many as 170 universities and officially recognized at more than 60. Today, C-schools are producing thousands of graduates each year and employers are scooping them up, as well as pumping more company time and money into school curricula, equipment and facilities. But construction education still copes with painful realities - that the discipline is an academic stepchild to larger progams on campus, that it lacks financial strength and its graduates technical depth, and that its welter of titles can leave students, recruiters and guidance counselors confused and uninterested.