Open the gates

"He's got a first in civil engineering, speaks a second language and he's just back from an ascent of Everest? We don't want him."

Those were the words of an HR director at a major contractor describing the sort of graduates his company needed. It's a frank admission that entry-level opportunities in construction don't meet the high-flying graduate's expectations, and, what's more, that they can't do the job anyway.

His comment indicates the twin problem at the heart of the crisis in higher education. For one thing, young people don't want to study construction. Partly it's an image thing, but more likely it's because a construction management degree sounds so specific, as if being a construction manager is all one would ever do. Young people can't face such narrow horizons. You can promote construction in secondary schools until you're blue in the face. School leavers know what they want, and it isn't a CM degree.

The second problem is that employers don't rate the construction graduate very highly because they're not adequately equipped, or adequately willing, to muck in at a site level, which everyone believes is the proper starting point of a management career.

The good news is that the industry can handle these two problems. If built environment degree courses are not providing the quality and quantity of graduates the industry needs, it's time to look outside the hoardings. At the end of a Humanities degree with no obvious job in site, most graduates are more ready to assess their options objectively. That's why it's great news that the CIOB has committed to defining a succinct conversion route for non-cognates by July this year. This will be a boost for graduates and employers, both of whom need a fast, predictable route to a professional qualification. Some of these will relish site management; others will need fast-tracking into other parts of the process such as business development, bidding and design management.

As for the continuing need for technically competent site managers, employers should support the existing vocational streams more, and the whole industry should give these people the esteem they deserve.