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Architect Magazine, in their November 2007 issue, had a few feature pieces on education and its correlation to practice. Here are a few things I found interesting pertaining to our forum:
Does anyone find the schools on this list to be surprising? My dark-horse on this list would have to be Pratt, although they were ranked at the bottom. I find this list intriguing because it is so difficult to find rankings of the undergraduate programs around the nation. This is confusing to me in that the undergraduate programs generally have similar curriculum and can be compared easily. However, graduate programs seem to be ranked fifty different ways despite their school’s specific concentrations and variation in curriculum. Schools like Cranbrook Academy have even avoided accreditation simply so they could dictate their program without limitations.
If you scroll to the bottom of the link, you will see a few survey questions whose results I find to be surprising. Under the question: “How do you rate the ability of the professors in conveying what is useful for professional practice?” 72% of participants gave a rating of above average to excellent. When asked: “Upon entering practice (if applicable) did you feel adequately trained to face the daily tasks?” a similar 78% of participants chose “yes.” My immediate thoughts were:
- Liar, liar, pants on fire!
- The group surveyed must be weighted in favor of these results.
Looking deeper into the article, I found that the group being surveyed consisted of Graduate students. The general breakdown of a typical graduate class generally contains:
- students with undergrads in different disciplines and no working experience.
- students that went from undergrad straight to grad school with little to no working experience.
- and students with actual working experience returning after a few years of practice.
Out of this group, only the last group could possibly answer these questions adequately. Other factors that could contribute to such lop-sided, non-critical answers could be that the students felt compelled to answer positively or that these students actually LIKE the academic process and don’t view it negatively.
From personal experience, I know that the answers to these questions should be turned on their head. Following graduation from undergrad, I basically knew nothing about the real practice of architecture and I almost had to start with a blank slate. Similarly, I have supervised interns with degrees from various schools and have found that their skills, in relation to pragmatic architecture, were just as bad as my own at that stage. Skills like basic AutoCAD functions (xref anyone?), detailing, notes, or reading basic drawings had never been instilled. The few that did have knowledge of these principles learned them during summer internships.
As a side-note, the interview of the Berkeley graduate student was interesting and relatively candid.
Ned Cramer, the editor of Architect Magazine, suggests a return to traditional studies. He calls for schools and the profession as a whole to “drop the attitude about historicist architecture and find themselves a middle ground.” He cites the bloated number of McMansions that have sprouted up which lack logical thought and an eye for detail. However the McMansions DO show that the general public has not, and probably will never, completely buy into modern architecture. So why not get an education on the genre of architecture we will actually be designing?
Andrew Caruso, the president of the AIAS, is interviewed in this fluff piece. I call it that because the questions were softball and the answers were canned. When asked what the concerns of today’s architecture students are, Caruso responds citing the concentration on green architecture. This response is actually pretty right on but then he goes all “Hollywood” on us dropping Al Gore into the mix. How (in)convenient? What this interview lacks is a dialogue about the transition from university to practice and what presence students WANT to have (not WHETHER they have one).
1 response so far ↓
1 Jesse // Nov 30, 2007 at 10:06 am
I love/hate statistics. They can be made to say whatever you want just by changing criteria… especially when it comes to schools. One’s school can quickly rise to the top of a ranking by throwing in such criteria as “among private schools with tuition less than $20,000/year that don’t offer a PhD program”. Always understand the context under which a statistic or ranking is generated.
As far as students inflating their answers, it might be partly psychological. By admitting your school didn’t prepare you, you are admitting that you aren’t prepared, and to admit that you aren’t prepared does two things: It bites into your ego, and goes against everything you were taught to say in a job interview. People tend to fill out their surveys as if their future employer was going to read it (and not anonymously).
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