Thoughts on construction science degree - what school?

[c3products20]

It's just a piece of paper that gets you in the door. Hire the individual not the degree. I could care less what school name the degree has printed on it. So many other important factors in hiring. Not taking away from the good schools mentioned, but that's my 2 cents.

Theoretically your right but a majorjty of companies are requiring a college degree before they will even consider hiring you.

[c3products20]

A lot of good advice given out here, one thing I would add is get the degree. It’s been my biggest regret. While a lot of times my experience trumped the younger person with the degree, they would get the opportunities before I did. It made my path a lot harder. Also if you can figure out away to get into A&M do it. Aggies stick together like nothing I have ever seen. I have seen that play out many times in meetings over the years. Wear the ring and they draw to each other.

We all know how hard it was to get that ring! That's why we respect each other the way we do.

[TX_Hoghunter]

One of my old roommates at A&M had that degree and he has done well for himself.

-john

[Fmjag64]

Theoretically your right but a majorjty of companies are requiring a college degree before they will even consider hiring you.

Yes, the degree is necessary but all applicants will have one for the most part as a requirement for the job, At that point, I would look more at the individual and what else you did aside from the degree that all other 10 applicants also have.

[Drycreek3189]

I didn't go to any of those schools, but have a construction management degree.

My two cents, if he wants to be a home builder, just find some home builders, ask to job shadow/work for free with them and see if he likes it. If he like actually building houses, and is good at it, he will get offered a job. He will not be the lead builder right off the bat, which gives him the opportunity to make mistakes, and learn from them, as well as learn how to estimate, understand designs, and manage accounting. OJT is the best training, and he can make money while doing it, as opposed to paying some professor in a school to tell him what the professor would do.

I would avoid the expense of college, especially in a field where there are so many home builders out there now looking for good employees. I know several home builders. All have degrees, but they are in manufacturing engineering, electrical engineering, degrees they could "fall back" on so to speak if the home building didn't work out. But when I talk to any of them, they say getting their degree just set them back 4-5 years on experience they could have gotten in the field if they just started building homes.

I retired from commercial construction two years ago and worked with many project managers on site. Most of them were on site stuck behind a desk writing RFI's, change orders, pay requests. A lot of them with degrees from A&M, they knew the insides and out of computer programs, reading plans but couldn't tell you how to hold a screw when staring a three inch wood screw.
A great way to become good with the construction science degree is to work hands on in the field while he's going to school. I spent a lot of my time as a consultant correcting engineers on why what they were proposing would not work. Degrees are a great and wonderful thing, hands on experience is priceless.

This is the best advice you’re gonna get. Degrees in construction, unless you want to ride a desk, are highly overrated. I was in the dirt moving side of construction and I can’t tell you how many college grads I saw that didn’t know sic ‘em from suck ‘em about what we did and why.

[BrianG]

I've been in Construction management for the last 25 years. After college (SHSU) I worked my first five years as a custom home builder and the lady homeowners drove me crazy! lol
I moved on to Muliti-family and I absolutely love my job. It has the right mix of on-site and office time. To move into upper management he'll need that degree. If he goes the commercial route, the civil engineering route will will give him more options.

I highly recommend the Blinn to TAMU. That Aggie network when your looking for a job is crazy!

[stickemhard3]

Construction Science degree is a really good route to go. In my opinion, he needs to intern every summer and map a plan out for his internships. Start him in the field first and then move to office type intern in the last 2yrs. Maybe even look at the different types of field, residential, commercial, and industrial. They all have different approaches and expectations. The PM side of things is almost all reports, EV's, and graphs but if you don't know the details of what creates those items, you won't know how people fudge numbers. A robust set of internships will help him turn the curve faster.

[Krautzy]

I graduated May 2020 with a construction management degree from Lamar University. Program has a 100% Job rate upon graduation. I graduated with a job in project controls for an Industrial Construction company. There are actually two guys who have the same degree as me who have been with the company about 5 years or so and are pretty well running jobs now.

[TeamAmerica]

Many good thoughts. If we really wants to learn the trade, then jump right in - no need for a college degree. There are not many guys with A&M degrees swinging hammers. Sure they may be on the job site but he will have a "desk" job one way or another! I would go the Civil engineering route and look for a job in master planned communities development (a place where Aggies dominate the industry). Taking raw land and making it into a residential community is a huge process and he could jump into home building from there if he really wants to.

If he really wants the college experience then go to Blinn and work hard! He should get a job or start a small business building basic decks, etc to get some exposure to building concepts and practice.

[mjhaverkamp]

Texas A&M has the best Construction Science program in the country. If that’s what he wants to do, A&M should be the first choice.

After A&M I would look at OK st, Texas Tech, OU, UT Arlington and SFA-in that order.

Also know that quite a few people get a Civil engineering degree and then still go to the Construction management side. Personally it doesn’t make sense to me to take a bunch of engineering classes that you’ll never use on the construction side, but people do go that route.

Regardless of the school, internships are incredibly important and he should try to do one every summer. One thing that sets A&M apart is that they are one of the few schools that require students to do a full fall/spring semester internship. Pair that with the summer and it’s 8 straight months of learning the industry and if he does well during that time, he’ll have a job offer a year before he graduates.


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My son started out wanting to get an engineering degree, he switched over to CS, took him 5 years at A & M, maybe too much beer pong, lol. He is a big asset to our company.

[Hogmauler]

Wife’s first degree was Construction Science from A&M.

[tx_basser]

UNT has a great program. Granted I graduated back in 1991 and specialized in Manufacturing, but I've kept up reading about what they are offering. If he wants to work with one of the big homebuilders a degree will get in in pronto and lessen the learning curve by understanding processes, material science, PMing a project, etc.

I heard the same thing back at UNT when I went there to got my Industrial Technology degree instead of a traditional Engineering Degree at A&M or something. The only people that I ran into that seemed to look down at me were the A&M types only knew books or theory and little application of that knowledge.

[Raleigh]

Your son should check out the program at UofH. It is a pretty solid program.

[TexasLongball]

Wow lots of good info here. I knew I shouldn't have started this thread at work.
I'll read through again when I get home. I appreciate the insight and debate.

[Rileym272]

Graduated from sam in 2019 with a construction management degree. If his end goal is to build custom homes sam has some great courses that will get him started on chasing his dream. some classes are a breeze like someone said but some are extremely tough and he will have to work hard.