Local universities have become the main force in professional engineering master education, but the difference of education and teaching resources may lead to the uneven quality of talent cultivation. It is an effective way to enhance the competitiveness of graduates to meet the needs of social development, and it is an inevitable requirement for the connotative development of discipline in local universities to develop postgraduate education by exploiting strengths and avoiding weaknesses. Under the background of "new infrastructure" and "Internet+", the transformation of engineering forms and construction modes is increasingly extensive and profound, and the T-shaped knowledge and ability structure is the quality demand for high-level engineering talents in civil and hydraulic engineering construction. This paper analyzes the urgency of the development transformation of civil engineering graduate education and discusses the main limitation factors in the development of professional master education in local universities. The allocation of teaching resources is relatively insufficient, the basic literacy of students is relatively weak, the teaching team is lack of engineering experience, and the homogenization competition of graduate education is prominent, and so on. The homogenization competition is manifested as the homogenization of training mode and objectives of academic and professional master within the university, as well as the homogenization of discipline development direction between universities, and this leads to the mutual squeezing of postgraduate education resources and development space. Based on the construction practice of civil engineering and hydraulic engineering master program in University of South China for more than ten years, this paper discusses the ideas and effects of improving the innovation and practice ability of professional master students in local universities. Under the concept of cultivating talents by virtue, it is an effective way to solve the problem of homogenous competition and enhance the core competitiveness of local universities to innovate collaborative education mode, develop discipline characteristics, integrate education resources and build education community. The reform ideas and practice modes have good reference significance for local universities to develop professional master education in accordance with the needs of the times.