Huh?  Since this is your first post, no comments, I'll assume that you are a bitter and angry Anonymous.  What you say makes no sense.

I don't know anything about the UK, but I've never experienced anything remotely like this in the US. Sometimes upper level students will have lower level students help them prepare for final critiques, doing grunt work stuff like building models, but even that rarely happens any more.

Don't be so quick to judge, Trace... it happens more than you might think. And when it happens, you have every right to be upset.

I experienced this during my thesis at the KA in Copenhagen. One of the thesis students was clearly heading for failure. At the penultimate critique, the instructors told the student to go recruit some former grads, friends, and family to do her drawings and models. The student's supervisor went to the fourth year studios and asked a bunch of those students to help with the thesis (making models, making drawings and visualisations, and putting together the presentation). 

In my boyfriend's department, there were people we had never seen before working on people's presentation models and drawings. One person had a team of 10 former grads who he paid to work on his final presentation materials. 

When I asked my supervisor about this, she was surprised that I would find it comparable to cheating. She said 'of course, it's not fair for you because you aren't from here and you don't have friends from the year ahead of you to come and help out.' She didn't understand that even if I HAD the opportunity to get other people to do my work.... I wouldn't. 

But, as she told me... that is 'the Danish Way' (and if you don't like it, you should just leave). 

So I left :)

@Donna Sink

We still had lower years signing up to help thesis students do grunt work a few years ago when I graduated. I think it's a nice tradition that encourages the different years to interact, and it gives people a sense of what the final hours of thesis are like. 

I only knew one person who paid to have their renderings done by an outside party. In general the rest of our class found the practice disgusting and lazy. My real problem with it is the fact that thesis is supposed to be a learning experience. If you hire professionals to do your work, then you aren't actually learning how to create the drawings or models that you want. In the end you will have interesting pieces for your portfolio, but you will not be able to replicate them if you get hired at a firm.  

Trace - I probably sound bitter and angry because that is what I am. Do you not see anything wrong with someone else producing work which you are presenting as your own?

After re-reading my first post I admit that some of what I typed does not make sense. I will retype the first few lines.

In certain architecture schools here in the UK, there is a general consensus that the majority of work produced is done so not by the students themselves but by previous graduates or by professionals from outside the school. This 'cheating'.......

Hopefully this makes sense to you?

Donna - there is a huge difference between having someone help you with the mundane tasks and 'hiring' someone to produce drawings and models that you would never be able to produce yourself. One is helping/ assisting and learning, the other is pure cheating.

This problem is further emphasised when the school decides to grade students relative to other students work.

Stephanie - Thank you for your comments.

It looks like it is not only 'the Danish way' as it seems to be happening here too.

Surely there are academic rules preventing this though? Not to mention ethics and personal integrity. Isn't it ironic that here we are complaining about the lack of morals and ethics in business and finance when some members of our profession cheated their way through university.

I'm with Donna.  I've never heard of anything like this happening in the US, or anywhere.  An interesting thing to know.  And I thought the academic world couldn't surprise me anymore.

In school some of my friends would joke about hiring the first years to do things for us, but we never considered it a legitimate option.  Even if it was just grunt work, I think most including the professors would think of it as cheating.

I cna't believe that anything beyond "helping out" with a large scale model would be permitted by any school

long time ago at sci arc i and three other classmates were privately 'hired' by a thesis student to get his final presentation in order. this student worked a year and a half prior to hiring us for two weeks to specifically draw his plans, build his model and compose his concept board. he paid us 300$ cash each which was considerably good pocket money at the time, specially just days before flying off to new york for a semester to do a traveling studio.

he had his granmother's house turned into an architect's office with brand new parallel bars, all kinds of drafting supplies, and around the clock nose candy for us badass crew.

four months later i saw his final presentation when he was shred to pieces for overproducing everything and missing the big picture. his hero architects were tony lumsden and jim sterling. the project was an opera house at the site where disney hall was eventually built. it was not a bad project actually, and drawings were all pencil with beautiful and detailed sections. wealthy poor guy was so disappointed after working long time on that project and spending 25 thousand dollars, he altogether quit architecture and went back to playing electric guitar... i don't know if he ever got anywhere with that either. he was freaking out from snorting too much coke when working with us alley cats.

anyway, besides the story, i am all for students helping upper division students with their graduation work as long as it is overseen by the professor/mentor/adviser and it does stay in the boundaries of enhancing the students work, mimicking real life design team and office studio environment with the leadership of the student. and yes, some form of compensation for the team. however, it must be proposed, vetted and approved by the administration.

never heard of anything like that happening in Canada, other than people helping out with very mundane construction of large installations, but i think stringing together a bunch of pieces of bamboo for someone is a completely different thing than doing a drawing or rendering for them.

A friend of mine mentioned to me that one of the students from the class ahead of her had used her boyfriend's portfolio to get into some really top-notch graduate programs.

A former co-worker of mine who had originally come from China was bragging one day about how he had got a near perfect on his verbal GRE score. I was surprised because even as a native speaker, that portion can be quite challenging and difficult to prepare for. He just remarked that in China they had "ways" get high scores. I could only surmise that he did not mean studying very hard. 

" I was even told that a student was directly encouraged by his tutors to submit work which was not his own.."

That, to me, states clearly that they are not referring to "help", but to someone else doing the entire project.  Hence my reaction.  

There's a HUGE difference from getting a few friends (upper/lower/grads/whatever) to help.  That is fine (imho).  What the OP is suggesting is that someone else was hired (or otherwise brought in) to do the project.  That, obviously, is misrepresentation and probably illegal.  No professor would suggest doing that.

Again, helping with the presentation, doing production stuff (drawings, model building, renderings) is fine.  That is no different than any firm, anywhere.

People (granted, I only read a few posts) seem to be going back and forth, but discussing mostly what is acceptable help (ie NOT doing the conceptual/design work) and what is not.

I would have to agree with trace's comment. I have seen thesis students hire out lower year students to help strictly with producing some methods of representation, under close watch by said thesis student and their thesis adviser. The undergrad is paid and I think the grad student is even given a small stipend to help with that. There is no conceptual or design work involved, and for the most part I've seen its been adding little trees and people into the models, etc. or photoshopping up a CAD draft. I don't think this is much different than getting another student to read over an English essay to point out spelling/grammar mistakes, or helping to reorganize a paragraph to make it clearer.

I can't understand how a Grad Student could possibly even afford to hire outside help.   Nevermind the moral debate, just financing people to do your work would be impossible for most people, unless they come from money.  Which, maybe they do, but I sure as hell couldn't have done that.  Just having the means to outspend your peers seems more outrageous to me than the debate of whether or not it is morally acceptable to have others do you work.

When I was at UCLA, it was kind of the way things happened - you helped those doing their  thesis when you started, then the younger ones would help you when it was your turn.  No money, beyond a few beers/dinner, exchanged hands, it was just an understood situation that you helped those that needed and when it was your turn, someone would help you.

Overall, I think it worked out well for everyone.  Having a few hands to share in starting/overlooking renderings, getting some supplies, etc., were life savers.  As a younger student, it is great exposure into what a thesis is all about, too.

i helped out thesis students at the gsd umpteen years ago - but, it was their design. so, yeah, no one's going to contest the wrongness of hiring someone to actually DO the design, but as for the final materials... much grayer area. i mean, how many firms would be punished in hiring out outside rendering companies (dbox or whoever) vs. having to do the work in-house.

with some of the portfolio work i see these days, i'm convinced some of the people are hiring out the 300/image firms to do their final renderings...

It's unrealistic to think that one person can do everything that a modern thesis class asks of you; plans, sections, elevations, 3d models, rendering, physical models, including a site model and a larger scale model of the building itself and that's all on top of working an entire semester to pick a site, studying precedents and hopefully having an airtight idea/deign. Maybe if you're doing a small scale project or something, then this is possible to do on your own, but most schools push for something ambitious and interesting so they can publish it in a magazine or exhibit it for their accredidation with NCARB.

When I was in thesis, I worked on my project entirely on my own, until about the last month of my last semester. At that point, I needed some help to get it done. The design was all mine, and I drew all the drawings, but when it came to the models and renderings, I had people help me out for that. As far as I'm concerned, this isn't cheating, in fact, I helped a lot of people on their thesis projects when I was an underclassman. It's become a sort of tradition at my school actually, to help the upperclassmen with their thesis project, in the hopes that someone will help you when the time comes. It's good prep for working in a firm IMO.

"It's unrealistic to think that one person can do everything that a modern thesis class asks of you; plans, sections, elevations, 3d models, rendering, physical models, including a site model and a larger scale model of the building itself and that's all on top of working an entire semester to pick a site, studying precedents and hopefully having an airtight idea/deign."

The reason why the work at UK schools looks so elaborate is because studio projects last an entire year, their studios are structured differently, and given greater weighting and time.  On top of that I'd also say things in the UK seem more competitive than in america.  I went to a US style for undergrad, had to take 4 or 5 courses in addition studio every semester, so the studio work just could not be compared.  I'm skeptical how outside help could be rampant when the work from UK students looks so ideosyncratic/particular. 

 i kind doubt it too domestic. 

i figure students should be able to do it on their own but if there is a tradition of doing it another way thas coolio too.

in real world no architect can take credit for anything that comes out of their office anyway, so teamwork experience is not entirely unuseful experience...

I was never involved in any discussions between students and tutors regarding who was doing the work... so this is only observational. I won't cast aspersions at anyone specifically.

The tutors are under incredible pressure to perform in order to keep their relatively high-paying and low-responsibility positions. I'm sure it's in the best interest of many not to ask that questions about where the work came from.

They can pretend that they are providing insights and helping the student find their path, and the students can pretending that they are working at the appropriate level, not just enjoying a nice one year vacation in London. Suddenly, when the portfolios are turned in, they are magically full of incredible -looking- work.

There can be a massive gap between what was shown at the final critique on July 31 and what was turned in on August 28th: not only in the amount of work, but also the level of skill with the tools used to produce it. The gap is simply too large to be explained as a "eureka" moment the day after the crit and a month of really focused production... especially when compared to the same student's development of ideas, skills, and deliverables in the previous nine months.

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@. Matías . The kind of money the "students" we're talking about have access to here would blow your mind.
@Orhan Great insights and a great story.