One last thought- we keep on kicking the can down the road and this is why we have this false perception that someone who is older and has more experience is more capable than someone younger with less experience. The mentoring has become so bad that in my opinion, the only reason why older architects (with "more experience") are more capable, is because they have failed more times than have been taught properly. We keep on relying on others to do the mentoring, rather than spending the time to do it ourselves. 

We can blame the institutions, the schools, but the real problem is that we aren't giving younger architects enough quality experience.

Younger kids can learn languages easier, but only if they are continuously taught and the language is practiced. Age has nothing to do with capability

There is an exam at the end that is supposedly a good metric, isn't it?

Also, the word "expert" comes from experience, which is just doing something a bunch of times until you can do it blindfolded. Older folks can learn just as well as younger, age has nothing to do with capabilities.

NCARB has dumbed down this process deliberately.  In the 1990s it was
taking an average of 7.5 years for interns to make it from graduation to
licensing, and many dropped out along the way and never came back.  In
the early 2000s NCARB formed an explicit mission to shorten that time to
3-4 years. Along came loosened requirements, fewer credits required, no more rules about the lengths of time that employment situations had to last, or the point in one's education that one could begin IDP, more allowed training settings, less of the training has to be under a licensed architect, remote supervision now allowed - and much less stringent review/reporting requirements for supervisors.

The first few times that I was an IDP supervisor, the paper forms were about 4 pages long, and had detailed break downs of all the hours in each category and sub-category.  They also had a half-page devoted to the supervisor's ranking of the intern's performance in various areas - as I recall there were four or five possible ratings, and if the supervisor selected "poor" or "unsatisfactory" there were spaces to explain why, and NCARB would follow up if an intern had gotten a lot of poor evaluations (and I think "unsatisfactory" got the report rejected.)  The interns used to have to come to me and discuss their progress, and we would review competencies and plan a path forward. NCARB used to provide a guide book for mentors/supervisors.  Now it's been reduced to a pamphlet.  NCARB used to encourage the candidate to have a separate mentor and supervisor, and employees' mentors used to actually contact me to discuss and advocate for the interns' experience in various categories. That hasn't happened in 20 years.

These days the supervisor just gets an email alerting that a candidate has logged experience.  Sometimes I get these emails about people who worked with me years ago, or who I don't even know are pursuing IDP/AXP.  What we see is much less detailed - it doesn't have a full break down of hours into tasks - it's just a listing of the broad categories - so unless the hours differ drastically from what I know that employer worked during that time period, there really isn't much info from which I could verify or question accuracy.  Supervisors are no longer asked for any rating of the quality of the employee's work - we only have the options to accept the experience as reported, send it back to request an edit to the number of reported hours, or reject it outright. 

I agree that the process has become watered down, but I don't think that's entirely the result of supervisors not wanting to provide good quality experience and mentoring. I think NCARB wants to rush the process and can't be troubled with quality.

I finished IDP about 3 years ago, so before it was AXP, but not too long ago.  I started IDP about 6 months into my first job.  I felt compelled because I didn't want to lose any of the work experience and not be able to count it if I was going to go for licensure anyway.  As someone with basically no experience, I was completely confused about what types of tasks counted for what categories and what I was supposed to be learning from each category.  (And like someone else brought up, how much exposure do you need to be able to count it?)  Luckily, I had a very nice coworker who sat down with me to go through the different categories, and what types of activities I could count.  (She had only just finished IDP herself and was starting AREs.)  Now, I'm the one explaining the AXP requirements to younger employees, and I know what I would like them to learn, but why does NCARB make this so much more confusing than necessary?!

I'm usually the one to complain about NCARB instead of defending it, but in this situation I'm placing the blame on the candidate and the supervisor, not NCARB. NCARB has provided the framework, but it is up to the candidate to get out of the process what they will. 

Good candidates will talk with their supervisors and ask about what they should be getting from the AXP process. Likewise, good supervisors will take the time to review the hours and ask for clarification from the candidate if necessary. Do we really need more bureaucracy from NCARB to try and force that interaction? By the time you get to the point in your career that you'll be logging IDP hours you should be grown up enough to realize if you fake it you're only hurting yourself. 

It's essentially the same with the ARE. I know I could have crammed for the tests and still passes and retained basically nothing ... I'm sure that many candidates do exactly this (which is why so many licensed architects know practically nothing). Would that have been the best for me and my long-term career goals? No. So I actually tried to learn and incorporate what I was learning into my work. I think I'm a better architect because of it.

The experience and examination portion of earning your license isn't the finish line, it's just another couple of steps in a career of learning and development. You'll get out what you put in. NCARB doesn't need to micromanage your development. NCARB is only there to verify candidates completing the AXP and the ARE are minimally competent. 

I don't think NCARB needs to micromanage this - but I do think it would be helpful if the hours that the candidate puts in were broken down into specific tasks, like they used to be.  Or maybe they are, and it's just that supervisors don't see that information?  I'm not sure, since I can't see the same interface that the candidates see.  The sum total of what the supervisor sees these days is about the size of a post-it note, and has something like 6 or 8 broad categories listed, with a total number of hours for each, and 3 big buttons at the bottom: approve, send back for edits, or reject.  I'm not really sure what was wrong with the old 4-page report - it gave supervisors and interns something to sit down and discuss, and I preferred that.  Maybe I should dig up one of the old forms and use that as our in-office system.

"revise and resubmitted", "approved as noted", "rejected" haha

It's a lot of red tape and paper work thrust on the supervisor who probably doesn't have time to begin with. Ultimately the ARE is going to reveal whether or not the candidate has gleaned anything. Further the work that's doled out to candidates it's rarely their choice. Boss asks an intern to render options for 3 years, not much the intern can do other than ask for more meaningful work or leave (in addition to any outside studying).

I know many who'd prefer the idp disappear altogether in place of a national minimum number of years worked + the tests.

I think the IDP process has some additional merit because of the red tape and chutes and ladders that need to be navigated by candidates to earn a seat at the test. It prepares you for a career of dealing with bureaucracy and the process of the profession.

I think what the OP is saying is that there isn't much to the red tape if there is no accountability and a good amount of leeway (cheating) is done with zero consequences. Not actually earning the various points in the various categories doesn't seem to matter. Meanwhile, if you try to have integrity and earn the experience, you just shoot yourself in the foot because it actually does take 7 years that way.

You can also takes classes that spoon-feed you what is on the test. A friend gave me materials from a class she took and I felt pretty stupid that I had been slogging through it all without cliff notes. I do think it's true that I'm better at thinking through situations because I figured out most everything on my own by relying on knowledge through experience organically, but it took years. I whipped through the exams but not IDP.

I'd compare and contrast the current system with the Professional Engineer license requirements. They have a very similar framework, log experience, take exam, become licensed. I do like how they have the FE(Fundamentals of Engineering) exam that must be passed prior to logging any experience. Then once the experience requirement is fulfilled only then can they sit for their respective exam. 

Another interesting nugget is that if they fail the exam 3 times, they have take 12 credits of relevant engineering courses before being eligible to take the exam again. With NCARB you can go into an exam to "test the waters" with the only consequence of losing out on the exam fee and having to wait 30 days. 

Our process is being dumbed down to line the coffers while engineering is  maintaining it's integrity. I do agree that 7 years was excessive before, maybe 5 is the right balance...but being able to complete your MArch with a license from select programs is a travesty. 

The PE exam is open book and you bring your own books. They have questions with minute details unlike the ARE which is pretty generalized.

The OP is asking about measuring the quality of the internship experience, and I agree that NCARB seemed more concerned with measuring that some years back.  Besides asking the supervisors to consider and grade the quality of the intern's work in each category, the finer breakdown of hours better prevented BulgarBlogger's example of being able to record 150 hours to satisfy a category, even if it was all in one peripheral task, with no exposure to the real meat of that category.

It frustrated me when I was trying to complete IDP that I had nearly twice the minimum total experience hours required, but still wasn't finished because I was missing 12 or 16 hours in one specific task.  That task was something that my firm didn't typically do, so I had to arrange with my boss to let me take some "field trips" to another firm to finally get that experience, but I got it.  Sure, even in that system my boss could have just signed off on my form - there's always a way to cheat - but at least it made everybody aware of what was expected. That issue of interns having 5 or 6 years of reported experience but still being short on a few specifics is why NCARB made the whole system less specific - but it seems harder now for interns to know exactly what experiences they're lacking, or to judge quality, when 150 hours of producing presentation drawings can just be signed off on as satisfying a whole category.

If it's all up to the supervisor and intern, and we don't want NCARB "hand-holding", the how/why is NCARB supposed to be responsible for judging quality of experience?  If we do want NCARB to judge quality, then we need to return to the much more detailed system of what's required, and to the system of requiring supervisors to grade the intern's performance.

I think the wuality of experience also has to dow ith whether or not firms are willing to pay to train their employees; and by pay, I mean the money spent on a supervisor’s time explaining stuff to the intern architect.

Many firms would argue- “this is a firm- a business - not a school.” And while that is true, I still think that part of the reason for why firms have found ways to fenegle the quality of an intern architect’s IDP experience is so they can minimize non-billable time. 

To solve this, I think that there should be skme kind of tax incentive during an employee’s training period. Budgets are already so tight and taxes are part of a business’s expenses and if you try to get a tax break somehow for employee training, then maybe you can actually eliminate the financial excuse for lack of training.

to elaborate a bit further: 

To prevent abuse, the amount of tax-deduction would be tied to a pre-determined percentage of expenditure based on the quanity of house submitted by the intern architect.

Example:

Say an intern architect’s wage is $21.63 an hour- his annual income is $45,000. Per the employee agreement, the employer agrees to mentor and train that employee through thr IDP program and other minimum state experience requirements. 

Say there are 2,000 billable hours per year (+80 vacation hours) of which the employee and emoloyer agree that 5% of those hours would be spent in direct training by the employer.

 So the value of 5% of 2000 hours = 0.05 x 2,000 x $21.63/hr, or $2,163 annually would be tax deductable by the firm.

this is not to say that the other 95% of hours won’t count toward IDP, just that the 5% would be spent on direct mentoring. And in order to get the tax deduction, both the mentor and the mentee need to sign off on the mentoring sessions.

here is a novel idea...get rid of the experience requirement all together and allow people to make their own decisions on when they are ready to assume risk and liability, and let the millionaire clients practice good common sense or get burnt.  Create a national exam that is limited to hsw / code issues. A test anyone can take. That test can allow one to work in any of the design professions freely and nationally.  

^yes eliminate the hand holding / red tape that is IDP.

It doesn't matter how micro managed or hands off the ncarb submission requirements are, there's always a workaround to getting hours through. It has always been an honor code system.

Minimum exams + minimum education + minimum years worked under licensed professional = licensed. After that one ought to be free to fumble along solo as they wish - be subject to lawsuits etc at their own risk.

What is the point in this nannying up to ages 30+? Just as within any profession, [the more experienced] one needs to trust that [less experienced] people will seek out help/guidance on topics which they are unfamiliar with, and that occasionally doing so does not equate to them being incapable nor unfit to operate [mostly] autonomously. This is applicable both within offices and in the profession at large.

The insistence on the hand holding reminds me a bit of no child left behind in some ways.

It delays the inevitability for some who will never really be successful and slows down those pitted to achieve high marks.

I understand the merits of both sides of the argument however I worry that “eliminating the red tape” would turn the professional license into more of a real estate license scenario, everyone has one, it really is just an email tag line. I know this idea is meant to have younger talented designers join discussions of what can get built but at the same time remember if you make it easier for them you’d alll of a sudden have a bunch of contractors or developers taking an easy code exam and saying yep I’m an architect this lowering the profession further and not really adding any value to it. And honestly it’s really easy to get the license, I have completely become burnt out on this profession and for awhile have known I’m going to go to the real estate side. Just figured I’d plant my flag pole in the top of mountain first so I snagged the license last year and might do some things as a hobby on the side. What more proof do you need that it’s way to easy to get when you have me, a hobbiest who had the thought, meh I’ll just get it before I go to the dark side, will be nice to just submit my own sets on some shitty flips.

^archi I hear you. But eliminating idp does not eliminate the education, rigorous testing and general 3 years work experience requirements.

If it is too easy then it's the tests which should be more difficult as idp/the honor code is an ineffective metric to prove a candidate has learned the material.

^archi while I agree the solution isn't clear cut, I think the general work requirement (which only some states mandate) is the best aide against a pure cram (and subsequent forgetting) of the info. That said, anecdotally from friends' stories I know it can be incredibly difficult to actually fulfill the idp requirements even within those three years, regardless if said individual is knowledgeable from outside studying. Some firms/employment situations/regional work available make it near impossible to (legitimately) gain exposure in every category and minute topic. One can't have gleaned nothing from 3 years of work, and if they truly have learned zilch being in a firm that long they probably aren't going to be successful at the tests or as an independent practitioner. Even with the crappiest of bosses assigning only pictorial type work, a perceptive learner can listen and absorb quite a lot, especially when paired with independent study.

If anything it would seem eliminating the idp would be a favorable option to those with less time due to children or other situations.

@Sponteneous Combustion 

In the 1990s it was taking an average of 7.5 years for interns to make it from graduation to licensing, and many dropped out along the way and never came back

Can you please tell me what is wrong with those who "dropped out along the way and never came back"? What is wrong with a lean and clean group of architects? Why do we insist on flooding the country with mediocre professionals? It seems like NCARB favors numbers over quality...

I didn't say anything was wrong with it. I thought I made it clear that I think the rules and procedures that were in place then did more to encourage high quality on-the-job training.

At the time an oft-repeated accusation was that NCARB was deliberately acting as a gatekeeper to limit competition, making the path to a license difficult specifically in order to cut down the numbers of people who ever made it to being architects.  The average length of time from graduation to license was a little over 7.5 years.  People were constantly complaining that it was unnecessarily difficult.  NCARB's response was to cut back the regulations, with the stated goal of cutting this average down to 3-4 years.

They are making the tests harder, by the way, to anyone who cares to know. They are harder in that you are going to need actual experience to be able to answer the questions, not just cliff notes. Sounds like an appropriate response to easing up on the IDP/AXP and even granting some licenses along with the degree. Even if people are eligible, they have to pass the exam. They greatly reduced the waiting period to retake after you fail one too, which I don't agree with because again it lets people who have more money than sense just keep taking them. Used to be 6 months, now I think it's 30 days. Can I get a gold star for passing all on the first try? No, there is no such thing. But I wasn't going to pay to fail an exam, so I didn't. 

oh boo hoo- we have to consider those who want to be parents... well guess what- have all the kids you want after you have gotten your license just as you wouldn’t want to get knocked up before graduating high school. You can’t have it all...

^and there again bulgar firmly plants foot in mouth. This sort of comment (as well as plenty of other retorts you've made on these forums) reveals the underlying reason you struggle to impress clients of a certain class.

I make politically incorrect comments anonymously, just like the conservative aristocracy makes comments about the 47% behind closed doors. Just because many people disagree with the statements, doesn’t necessarily make them untrue.

If only there was some sort of standard means of testing experience...

I don't know what annoys me more, the sjw's who refuse to recognize that empowering bias through dependency programs like idp/axp is feeding the problem they pretend outrage about, or the good ole boys who pretend to advocate meritocracy, but are truly afraid of increasing competition and really support a Nanny state.  Again, I ask all licensed architects and designers...would you turn down the freedom to work across all design disciplines (landscape, arch, interior) and throughout the entire US and its territories?  

jla-x:

Your last hypothetical question is entirely outrageous. I can't even believe you would compare acting to architecture. Actually, perhaps I can, if I can understand your understanding of architecture as some glorified title given to designers since we already outsource structural and MEP (you would argue that we mostly just coordinate those disciplines and pick stone and tile - something an Interior Designer can do), but perhaps that is YOUR reality; it isn't mine. Acting carries ZERO liability, whereas Architecture is incredibly risky, where if you actually do what real architects do instead of pretend to be an architect and just coordinate drawings, take meeting minutes, and yell at contractors to save face in the wake of your incompetence, mistakes could be the end of you.

No - a national exam is NOT a good idea. The reason being is because clients want more than someone just knowing what a rim joist is or whether an architect understands thermal bridging. When a client hires an architect, the client hires that architect for his/her expertise in understanding the construction process for that particular region. 

Case in point: I am currently working on a townhouse where the client had no idea about anything related to construction. If I hadn't told that client that he needed to engage a construction attorney to draw up party wall agreements with his neighbors and I started instructing through drawings and directives for the contractor to start tearing down common elements, I could have potentially been exposed to liability for not applying the standard of care. I don't care how contracts are written. Even if I walked away legally unscathed, my experience would not only save my client money, but also protect my reputation. 

The moral of the story is that each region is different and having experience in that particular region is something that NCARB wants to ensure an architect has before allowing architects to practice elsewhere in the country. 

It is not ncarb's job to protect the client. That is the client's 'job' as well as, to an extent, the architect. As far as HSW that falls under the user/public being protected, who may or may not also be the client.

Ncarb's only purpose, as has been stated repeatedly on this thread, is to ensure a minimum level of competency amongst those using the professional title. They also have slowly made headway on provided a national standard of what that is, one does not need ncarb anything in most states to become an architect in that state...Legal ramifications for individual scenarios lie at the state and local levels in which ncarb has no say nor jurisdiction. One could argue the entire point of ncarb is to provide a national unified standard of competency.

Let's make the education better, the experience better, and the tests harder.

And let's have an initial license just like we already do, then add another board certification to say you have gone beyond minimal competency.