On campuses across the United States, fall brings homecomings, which tend toward beer-laced nostalgia amid the swirling autumnal leaves. Some of us will return to architecture schools, shudder as we pass through the design labs, puzzle over incomprehensible student work, clap old friends on the back, eat and drink to excess, then gratefully retreat to paying jobs.

One university’s graduates have cause for another kind of celebration—an unanticipated one. On October 22, graduates of Tulane University’s architecture program gathered for a ceremony celebrating the retroactive conferral of the Masters of Architecture degree. You heard that correctly: Throughout most of its long history, the Tulane School of Architecture offered the B.Arch. as the first professional degree. In May, with a wave of the academic wand, those degrees automatically converted to a master’s.