Evaluation of Sustainability of Czech Vocational Education and Practical Training for the Position of Construction Manager

Abstract

Current requirements of employers in the construction industry are aimed at strengthening the link between schools and the manufacturing sector. It is desirable that the students are during their studies already involved in the investment construction process, at least as part-time workers. At the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Brno, Czech Republic, this is being ensured by the accredited course Professional Practical Training. The aim of this contribution is to evaluate and analyze the inclusion of this student internship as a mandatory part of the study to present how many students worked for which construction companies during a period of 10 years, indicating the number of successfully completed internships for individual academic years. At the same time, the boundary conditions for this practice are described. The hypothesis to be confirmed is that the conditions are set in such a way as to be a prerequisite for successful fulfillment. Descriptive statistics are based on a sample of 92 employers involved in the system of securing professional practices for the period 2010 to 2020. The analysis showed that each year about 70–75% of students stay with the same company for their further part-time work during the remainder of their studies, and they may also stay for subsequent graduate employment. A total of 507 students started and finished their internship. Moreover, in the following years of practice, some of the graduates of the field became responsible for the tutoring of other student’s work experience on the construction site. Having previously gone through the same educational scheme, it allows them to lead and evaluate students with an optimal degree of constructive criticism.

Current requirements of employers in the construction industry are aimed at strengthening the link between schools and the manufacturing sector. It is desirable that the students are during their studies already involved in the investment construction process, at least as part-time workers. At the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Brno, Czech Republic, this is being ensured by the accredited course Professional Practical Training. The aim of this contribution is to evaluate and analyze the inclusion of this student internship as a mandatory part of the study to present how many students worked for which construction companies during a period of 10 years, indicating the number of successfully completed internships for individual academic years. At the same time, the boundary conditions for this practice are described. The hypothesis to be confirmed is that the conditions are set in such a way as to be a prerequisite for successful fulfillment. Descriptive statistics are based on a sample of 92 employers involved in the system of securing professional practices for the period 2010 to 2020. The analysis showed that each year about 70–75% of students stay with the same company for their further part-time work during the remainder of their studies, and they may also stay for subsequent graduate employment. A total of 507 students started and finished their internship. Moreover, in the following years of practice, some of the graduates of the field became responsible for the tutoring of other student’s work experience on the construction site. Having previously gone through the same educational scheme, it allows them to lead and evaluate students with an optimal degree of constructive criticism.