Changing Course in Architecture Academia

Walk into any of the 154 architecture schools certified by the National Architectural Accrediting Board and you are likely to encounter students working long hours in the design studio, learning their craft in small groups through desk crits and pinups. It’s a scenario with roots in the 19th-century tradition of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Combined with rigorous professional requirements, this approach makes becoming an architect an extended and expensive proposition, entailing from five to eight or more years of full-time study, with heavy course loads. Factor in internship and licensure exams and you’ve got an endurance course: the average time from starting a degree to becoming a licensed architect is 11 years. Architecture, and architectural education, are still to some degree a gentleman’s game geared to people well endowed with time, money, and social capital.

High barriers to entry skew the demographics of architecture by steering away talent, especially among women, first-generation college students, and people from historically underrepresented ethnic groups. Recognizing this, the organizations regulating access to the profession have changed procedures. Nineteen schools now incorporate work experience and test preparation into degrees to provide an “integrated path to architectural licensure,” and the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards has changed its internship requirements to recognize a broader range of activities and give candidates an earlier start.