The postgraduate education of civil engineering has made a great success during the past 20 years. To training innovative talents, universities and colleges have done many works in the postgraduate education plan and curriculum system. We compared postgraduate education methods and requirements between P. R. China and the USA, and presented that it is important to strengthen the process management, including foundational course training, research topics, research requirements, etc. Meanwhile, to improve their independent creative work ability, they need to take part in more research projects and write more papers. The results show that the foundational theory training is the basis of the innovative ability cultivation.