The Path to Licensure is Getting Shorter
We've all gone through the long, grueling process of architecture school, internships and ARE exams, but that long journey will soon be shortened for future generations of architects.
NCARB recently announced an unprecedented endorsement to the structure of becoming licensed, allowing internships and licensing exams to become integrated within the architecture curriculum. Further details can found in the ARCHITECT article here. With the ever-increasing competition for entry level architectural positions, will this new endorsement instill “friendly competition” or will it increase the heavy burden already undertaken by architecture students to meet the intense curriculum demands?
Let us know your thoughts and predictions for this potential new generation of “whole architects."
Talk About It
I am interested to see the reaction of the universities to this endorsement. Will they be more willing to keep students (and tuition) for additional years as internships are woven into the mix with studios? Will this discourage studying abroad, which is commonly encouraged in the architecture career path? More and more questions arise with this endorsement, and it will be an interesting discussion over the next few years!
There are a multitude of questions that arise from NCARB announcing their intentions of licensing architects upon graduation. Will these architects really be "whole architects"? Are they going to have an education based more on Construction Documents and Codes or will it still be heavily design based? And lastly, with schools cramming internships and AREs into the curriculum, will there still be time to experiment with design and materials?
The last question I posed is the one I'm mainly concerned about. After working over a year full-time, I had a stark realization that many, or rather most, companies do not experiment either with design or materials due to cost and liability. This has been exceptionally true since the Great Recession due to most companies having to cut as much of their operating costs as possible just to stay afloat. Universities on the other hand, greatly benefit from R&D. If you take away time for that experimentation to put it toward licensure, you might lose the incredible programs like the Rural Studio or many others that are heavily digital and/or fabrication based.
What our industry needs to be asking is, if we start to lose experimentation in the studios who's going to pick up the slack? And is it really worth having a licensed architect right out of school or is it better to have someone who can really think through a problem and out of the box?