concurrent testing

IDP is independent of concurrent testing - anyone that has a professional degree, anywhere in the country can begin taking the tests through the Texas or California boards.

To the extent that there is a problem with IDP, I think it is just the long response times and incompetent management of the program by NCARB. The paperwork itself isn't that much work, the experience isn't that hard to get (except maybe at very large or specialist firms) and there is no way that anyone should get licensed without having sufficient experience in each of those areas. And it really doesn't cost much more when compared to other professional licensure internship programs.

Janosh-can you really do that? Work in one state but test through another?

You betcha. Check it out:

http://www.archvoices.org/pg.cfm?nid=29

Contact your State Board to find out if they will let start early, but even if they don't and make you sit on your hands for a period before they give you your ticket, you will still probably get done faster than folks that wait until they finish IDP.

In a nutshell (from Archvoices):

Recap of 'How to' Take the ARE Concurrent with Internship


1. Talk with your home state's licensing board about transferring exam credits;

2. Download and complete either the California or Texas application form;

3. Mail the application and $100 application fee to the respective board;

4. Wait for that board to confirm your eligibility;

5. Start taking whatever divisions of the ARE you feel most prepared to take, at a Sylvan Learning Center near you;

6. Complete IDP;

7. Apply to your home state board to confirm your local eligibility for the ARE; and

8. Finish taking any remaining divisions of the ARE.

You will then have completed both the experience (IDP) and examination (ARE) requirements for licensure and should qualify for initial licensure in your home state.

Has anyone actually done this? Do you guys know what MD's Registration Board thinks about it? I'd like to learn more.

I did it in a sense. I started taking exams through CA while completing IDP, finished the exams, got licensed in Michigan, and now will take the CA Supplemental next month for licensure here.

One way to make it easier would be to not make you have to calculate how many "Training Units" (or "Value Units" or whatever they're called --- "one Value Unit equals eight hours of acceptable experience") you have in each training area, but just to log hours worked. I recall finding the nomenclature very frustrating when I did it.

if you want to practice in florida, for instance, you need to take the exam in florida, because of hurricanes. and you still need to complete IDP before the state will grant your license.

my suggestion: part-time experience should count. IDP should be guidelines not requirements.

employers should be mandated to provide those interns, in their firm, IDP experience. not just a slap on the wrist, but an actual penalty for those that do not comply. force them to keep records, just like the IRS and other govt agencies do, and that way the employer can't do the wink and nod thing. this is critical to making IDP mean anything.

hyperbolical: the ARE is identical in every state, and in Canada. Some states have their own additional tests, with California's being the most imposing. In most other states that have additional tests, the additional tests are merely open-book multiple choice tests about the state's statutes.

There is no specific hurricane component of the ARE in Florida that is any different than the ARE that people take in Wisconsin, Alaska, or Canada - because the ARE is standardized and identical everywhere.

As for making IDP compliance mandatory in firms: I think this would have the adverse effect of causing some firms to stop hiring interns at all.

In a nutshell, how to fix IDP.....eliminate it all together. That's my solution. Does a structural engineer need to have a very long and very burecratic internship program. Heck no. I don't think becoming licensed in architecture needs to be any more difficult than for engineers. It's absolutely ridiculous. We need to be more stringent on who can get an architecture degree from a university. Not how difficult it is to get licensed. IDP is a joke. Wake up and smell the coffee NCARB. Cut the "accredited" colleges in half and don't worry about the IDP waste of time.

Just my 2 cents of rant tonight.

Clarification. I think the ARE exam is good as it is. Just don't waste our time with IDP. Make it more difficult to get that BArch or MArch degree. Don't worry so much about counting hours for interns. It's ridiculous. Anyone who does 100% toilet room details won't pass the ARE anyway. IDP is just a gov't money grab in my mind.

...if IDP could be integrated into the educational curriculum in say 3rd,4th and 5th year in a very rigorous way, it would be much more valuable to the student in preperation for the professional world, rather than making the professional experience more complicated than it already is, and it would produce graduates with a better idea of what they're getting into.
but this wouldn't make ncarb any money, so no chance of that happening.

i've always wanted to start my own architecture program like this:

--five-year professional B.Arch program
--then you enter a post-professional M.Arch program that takes four years:
---one year working (for pay) at a "large" firm in the same city (a firm that has an agreement with the architecture firm to host a large number of interns)
---one year working (for pay) at a "not large" firm in a different locale (at least a different city, preferably a different state)
---one year working (again, for pay) at another large or small firm in a different country, with preference towards countries where the primary language is not english
--then, one year of "slack" time where you explore fun subjects, do an interesting puff thesis piece, take swedish for an elective...and successfully complete your ARE.

so then at the end of nine years one would have a B.Arch, the ability to teach, wide-ranging work experience...and a license. IDP would pretty much be taken care of.

I'm in...substitute B.Arch for kick-ass four year B.Design in Arch, swedish for italian. ???deal?

IDP and BArch at the same time? I don't know about you, but in undergrad I barely had enough time to worry about my BArch, let alone other stuff. Unless you were going to only do school part time, and that model already exists in the BAC.

during your M.Arch, not during your B.Arch

the three years of work would be structured so that you hit everything you needed to in IDP

it's all academic anyway

ochona: I was responding to o+'s comment that occurs right before yours. the M.Arch option you propose is interesting, but what about people that wouldn't be going directly from a B.Arch to a M.Arch II program, i.e. preferring to take some time off between for whatever reason. What would you propose in their case?

ochona - it looks like you are almost proposing a return to an apprenticeship education like architecture had before the days of college degrees. I think that IDP makes a feebile attempt at doing that with little results. I just have a few problems with your idea. Are you saying that in order to practice architecture one needs to complete all 9 years and obtain the MArch degree? I personally think a well structured BArch is adequate college training for the profession if one is so inclined to quickly enter the field. Also, I think both the BArch and MArch are excellent degrees, regardless if you ever practice architecture or not. You're making the MArch degree only available to those that want to be architects. What's wrong with getting that degree to eventually go into a non-traditional career? It doesn't address those people. Clearly there are shortcomings of IDP, but I don't think it should be integrated into education. Concurrent testing seems to be the easy fix. Then again, as a profession we seem so beset to make it continually more difficult to get licensed while our influence on the build environment is shrinking. Maybe we should make it easier for people to get licensed. Don't make the exam easier, but reduce the paperwork and beaucracy. Hence, my solution, eliminate IDP.

"employers should be mandated to provide ... IDP experience ... force them to keep records, just like the IRS and other govt agencies do, and that way the employer can't do the wink and nod thing"

look ... i understand the frustration many architects have with IDP ... but, why does it make any sense at all for your employer to start doing your paperwork for you ... ?

employers didn't mandate IDP ... that came from other places ... if you start adding to the burden of hiring interns, you'll find employers even less inclined to hire -- and pay -- entry level staff than is the case today

I agree with A pretty much, about making it harder to get the degree and eliminate the IDP. Makes perfect sense.

If it were significantly more difficult to get that architecture degree in the first place, would there not then be less graduates?

with consequently less money coming in to the schools?



me thinks me sees another problem.

the idea is that one WOULD enter the field after their b.arch -- but in a way that is structured enough to somewhat reliably provide a set range and variety of experiences. like apprenticeship, i guess. because the idea of IDP is great -- you sample the wide variety of tasks within practice -- but the administration / enforcement of it is not.

the idea of folding the IDP into the m.arch is to provide kind of a helping hand during the IDP and testing process -- right now people kind of twist in the wind a bit because it's so easy NOT to take the test.

however, if we remove licensure / internship / etc and make the architecture degree "harder" to get then we will take ourselves back to the days when one's qualifications in architecture were somehow mysteriously linked primarily to one's social status

many of those countries where graduation is sufficient for qualification as an architect -- also are welfare states where higher education is pretty much free, which is not a bad thing altogether

If architects and architecture abides by the law of supply and demand I don't think having less graduates is such a bad thing. If the supply of architects were to drop but the demand remain the same that should in turn increase our fees = more money.

I've always argued that there are far too many architecture grads out there. Why not be more elitist like the public assumes we are.

From college I made some friends that ended up becoming pharmicists. They all started with straight out of college salaries of around $100k. In the US there are less than 1/2 the pharmacy colleges than there are architecture colleges. That equals less than 1/2 the grads = huge demand = good pay. By pushing huge masses of architects into the profession we are only pushing down our earning potential.

Yes, make the degree much harder to obtain...both BArch and MArch. At the same time, be very dilligent to make sure there are no back-doors for non-NCARB accredited grads becoming registered.

i think the whole licensure process is doing the culling for us as it is

many grads, few "architects" and getting fewer

the baby boomers will be retiring in the next few years and how many architects will that take out of the pool? i know, i know, architects don't retire -- they just die

consider these facts, taken from published US Census Data:

architects in the US:
-- 1965: 43,156
-- 2000: 207,562

US urban population:
-- 1965: 137,281,500
-- 2000: 222,353,453

architects per 10,000 urban population:
-- 1965: 3.14
-- 2000: 9.33

average annual growth rate from 1965 to 2000:
-- urban population: 1.39%
-- architects: 4.59%

based on research that i conducted while in graduate school, construction spending (in constant dollars) tracks urban population almost precisely ... i.e. the amount of new building construction grows at about the same rate as urban population

we're on the wrong end of this trend, boys and girls ... you want to know why it's so damn hard to make a decent living in architecture, consider the true implications of the numbers shown above

and, these numbers only track LICENSED architects ... given the declining registration rates among recent graduates, i suspect the real implications of "too many architectural graduates chasing too few dollars" are even worse than these numbers suggest ...

but hey, i'm no economist .... maybe i got it wrong

A: there are 92 accredited Pharmacy schools in the US (according to ACPE) and 114 accredited Architecture schools (according to NAAB.) So I don't think that the difference in the number of programs is enough to account for the discrepancy in salaries - especially considering that the pharmacy programs appear to have a much larger average enrollment than the architecture programs.

I would think that there is a much higher demand for pharmacists - after all more than half of US citizens probably see a pharmacist in any given year - maybe even more like 90% of people, whereas many people will go a lifetime without calling an architect.

Also, enrollment in architecture programs has supposedly been declining over the past 20 years. It spikes slightly during economic downturns, because that's when a lot of people choose to go to grad school - but in general there are a few more programs now than 20 years ago but they average lower enrollments.

B.Arch programs in particular do not tend to have high retention rates. In some schools fewer than half of the students who start the program ever graduate. B.Arch graduates also don't have a high chance of staying in architecture - only about half are still in the profession 7 years after graduating.

The number of people in the process of registration is way down according to NCARB. Membership in the AIA is way down, especially membership by people under age 45.

So it does not seem that there is a great recent influx of architecture grads that is flooding the profession. Quite the opposite in fact. No, the problem seems to be related more to the public's perception of the value of hiring architects in the first place. In other words, there may be more architects than are required by the public, but this is not a new phenomenon.

As for the baby boomers: the oldest of them are currently 59. The youngest are only 41. Those are prime years for most architects. I think we have a long way to go before their retirement causes much of a dent.

It seems to me that there are two separate and distinct problems with IDP and licensure in architecture: 1) those graduates who are working happily and responsibly in firms but are not getting licensed for a number of reasons (including by choice), and 2) those architecture graduates who end up in some allied field or wholly distinct position, contributing unique value based on their architctural education (and quite likely called "architects" by their unwitting colleagues), but not officially "architects."

For group #1, IDP is mostly a minor bureaucratic hurdle. Work long enough, and eventually you'll do stuff that can be said to fall into the various categories. For these people, getting to take the ARE concurrent is the simplest solution, because the only trouble is in finding the time to study for and take nine different exams in order to get a license, the value of which is dubious at best. Minimizing unnecessary delays from NCARB would be nice too, but baby steps....

For group #2, however, IDP is a problem because they are getting valuable and diverse experience, just not in the exact settings that NCARB specifies, or with the kind of supervision that was standard circa 1980. The solution here seems to revolve around eliminating (or circumventing) the training settings and allowing credit for core experience regardless of who is supervising you. One proposal for this dilemma has been to put more emphasis on the IDP Mentor, rather than the IDP Supervisor, to sign off on your work. While the Mentor might not have direct knowledge of your daily work, neither do many "supervisors," and the Mentor at least has less incentive to outright lie in order to avoid actually giving you client negotiation experience, for example.

As for the discussion about supply and demand, I don't think that the supply of people doing architecture work is significantly affected by the numbers of people who get licensed to do that work. The reality is that a great many people are working in firms and doing work that wouldn't change a bit if they were licensed (except that they'd be personally liable). Because very few people would quit their jobs and start a whole new firm if they got licensed tomorrow, this discussion isn't about making the profession "more elite." And to the extent that some people think it is or should be about restricting supply in order to increase demand, they misunderstand the supposed justification for professional licensure in the first place.

Archi-F -- i agree that there are definitional problems with the data presented above.

however, i also believe those definitional problems have always existed, so time series comparisons remain valid ... however you look at it, supply is way up relative to demand

scratches ... you make some very good points .. i would never advocate a formal (or informal) effort to restrict supply ... the world needs lots of people who appreciate architecture ... whether they work in the profession or not

however, economics 101 teaches that prices go down in the face of excess capacity ... in my view, the data shown above suggests the fundamental reason we, as a profession, have no pricing power in the marketplace ... there's always somebody else out there who is hungrier and will do the work for less

our economic salvation depends on increasing the demand for what we do ... that will happen only by making a persuasive case for the true value of our time, our talents and the results that we produce ... it will not happen by trying to make the profession more 'elite'

's exactly the problem ennit...in tokyo there are a shitload of "producers" who have no training as architects but do a surprisingly large amount of work that architects would be doing in the us. they don't give a ding about the licence deal at all, but it sure does explain why ando never got a licence. he simply never needed one.

i rather like the system in the uk. part I with undergrad, then year out and part II after finishing masters. work a couple more years and do part III, but part of the "exam" includes documentation of a project that you have overseen. not the case in the us, nor here for that matter. funny that there ain't reciprocity tween the countries though; strange pissing match going on...each claims the other is bollocks. total rubbish.