At a glance
Alfred State College has been named to the top 10 undergraduate construction schools in Michael Nelson's inaugural rankings of the top undergraduate construction management and construction engineering programs in the nation.
Alfred State College has been named to the top 10 undergraduate construction schools in Michael Nelson's inaugural rankings of the top undergraduate construction management and construction engineering programs in the nation. Nelson's Web log, C-School Blog - Construction Management Education, covers current events and trends in construction management education, student construction competitions, and student outreach to encourage pursuit of construction related careers.
Nelson became interested in generating a list of top construction schools several years ago when he came across an Engineering News - Record (ENR) article entitled, "The Nation's C-Schools," which provided the base data for the rankings as well as the C-School term (like B-Schools for Business Schools).
Nelson's goals were to develop a list of top construction schools that yield a consistently high level of entry-level construction professionals to help employers focus limited recruiting resources (time and money) as efficiently as possible. He also wanted to initiate discussion on how construction schools stack up against one another, in order to improve the state of construction education.
Nelson gauged the construction industry's interest in a particular C-School by determining how many construction firms were competing for the students graduating each term. He arrived at a numerical representation of construction industry interest for the rankings by dividing the number of construction firms recruiting from a particular program by the number of students graduating each term. Using this methodology, the Number #1 C-School was Virginia Tech which scored an impressive 5+ construction firms competing for each graduate.
Alfred State College alumnus William H. Goodrich, class of 1984, president and CEO, LeChase Construction Services, LLC, pleased his alma mater has done so well, notes: "Alfred State College provided a wonderful foundation for me - the construction engineering technology program I graduated from was a building block in my career and education. As the president and CEO of LeChase Construction, (Rochester) I know first hand how important a good education is to landing in the right company. I feel confident hiring a graduate of Alfred State knowing what they will be bringing to the table."
Admittedly, this list has limitations, including: rather "ancient" 2001 data is used to generate the list; the difficulty of larger schools to compete with smaller schools when dealing with a ratio-driven ranking system; and schools that did not provide the data on number of graduates and recruiting organizations where not included on the list.