This project commenced with the aim of scoping the challenges facing Built Environment and Design (BED) Education1. Early and rich conversations with a range of stakeholders – academics, professionals and graduates in their early years of practice – quickly clarified that the singular challenge for most parties centres on the ways in which courses prepare graduates for the pace, diversity and flux of contemporary professional practice.

In pursuing understanding of this central challenge this study has focused on new graduates in BED disciplines by canvassing their views and those of two other major stakeholder groups (academic staff and professional practitioners in the disciplines studied). The first crucial years of a young graduate’s life in the workforce are shaped by a number of factors including the quality of the transition-to-work experience. The quality of this life-shaping transition is dependent on a range of factors including the ways in which graduates are educated in universities, their personal developmental characteristics and those of the professional people around them and the preparedness of workplaces and other professional groups to guide new recruits through the transition experience. This study makes recommendations about how the variations in transition experience, resulting from the vagaries of all these factors across a range of worksites, may be better understood, perhaps normalised, and, at least, supported.

The study proceeded through literature review, focus group interviews, national online survey and workshops. Through all these methods a number of challenges and factors essential to the transition experience, and the quality of education which precedes it, were identified. Firstly the study found further evidence of the importance of higher-order graduate capabilities, namely, the development of judgment, critical enquiry and strategic thinking. Alongside these capabilities the importance of the development of emotional intelligence, particularly interpersonal and social skills, was stressed by all stakeholders. At the time of writing the global economic crisis was providing challenges to the sector and its young graduates. This phenomenon proved the value of the development of resilience and persistence in graduates, the education system was called upon by all stakeholders as a place where the future-proofing of neophytes would ensure that the unknown challenges of the future could also be confronted. The study found that the challenges of transition to work are best supported by authentic undergraduate experiences both on and off campus, inside and outside classrooms, and that commencing professional life is made easier for new graduates when university courses and workplace settings develop, sustain and support high standards and high expectations of students. All these findings indicate the importance of stakeholder expectations, roles and responsibilities in respect of the transition-to-work experience. Whilst full agreement about how these things should occur is not necessary, a process (amongst stakeholders) which seeks value alignment around transition through discussion, debate and agenda-setting would probably assist to address what is seen as a major challenge in built environment and design education.

In light of these factors and findings the study recommends three major, and interlinked, courses of action to support built environment and design education, namely:

1. The establishment (or location within an existing body/bodies) of a national good practice guide and network to help ensure that the transition-to-work of BED graduates is supported and sustained across the sector. This guide and network should determine, for the benefit of graduates and the workplaces they enter, the ways in which curriculum, academic practice and professional workplaces can adapt to ensure effective transition to work.
2. The conduct of a national conversation about transition-to-work for BED graduates to help shape policy and practice. This conversation should be ongoing and inclusive of all stakeholders. Discussion should be led from the highest levels of professional education in the BED disciplines. A coordinated effort to align academic and professional values through this conversation and debate is likely to assist the nation’s BED neophytes to make a better fist of transition to working life through the explication, exploration and clarification of roles and responsibilities.
3. The development and implementation of a range of transition-to-work strategies designed to ameliorate the negative effects of the transition experience and to promote its importance to both the professions and the career development of young BED professionals. This recommendation is made on the premise that such a transition is likely to be made more effectively in an environment where professions, professional practices and academic environments undertake to ‘do’ a range of things to assist graduates make this transition.

Currently, the work of academics in BED disciplines and that of the BED professions in practice is relatively silent on the issue of graduate transitions aside from anecdotes and war-stories from graduates, employers and academics alike. At a time when outcome standards are receiving national attention, this study has revealed that the silence is not one of quiet agreement but rather more a symptom of lack of discussion about a very important issue in the development of the built environment and design workforce. There is a great deal to be gained by establishing and nurturing the conversation about transitions-to-work and to use the resultant agreements and tensions to shape the outcomes of courses and the ways in which the professions meet graduates on entry.