Orhan, you're quick! I was just about to post this. Where'd you hear about it?

Actually I'm going to start a new thread, this one is a bit sour for me.

Go Dave Niland! Sue the bastards!

i'll try and make this short, as an architect that runs his own studio, i AGREE 100% with David Niland. i can't hire theory, theory does not produce construction documents, theory does not let you have a compete understanding of how building are built. theory is very important, but it is only part of the whole of an architect and their education. imagination is more important than knowledge [ae], but not when you graduate from school and are unemployable in the real world. we hire almost 95% of our junior architects with a 5 year degree, it is almost impossible for us to hire someone with a 2 year masters degree. that is the true reality of the new system.

"The undergraduate program has no sanction. By itself, the undergraduate degree is a curiosity, like a degree in English. It alone gets you nowhere but perhaps a drafting room with lower wages than someone with a professional degree, it does not earn you the right to sit for the licensing exam so your future is dead ended"


This is not true everywhere. And only if people keep buying into this will the unessessary pseudo-education of architects continue and the 4yr be eliminated. its a state by state process still.


4 years is plenty to be a competant architect. In fact you might be better since you would have more work exposure and experiance at an earlier age thus helping define what the profesion means to you. if you dont get out into the world until your 25 or so you might be limiting your perception to studio based experiance. As you age its somewhat unavoidable to become locked into certain world views which could harm your ability to perform as a profesional architect.

jbech, you make a really good point. Thanks.

i am only in my early 40's, but i still remember the comments the old time modern masters i worked around for my formative post degree years would make. one of their favorites when hiring someone, was way did a candidate have a masters degree in architecture, is it because they could not get a job after graduating. so in other words, well established, working architects, with a linage of accolades, would look down on those with masters degrees. with a good solid professional 5 year degree in architecture, you should have been employable and start working in a studio learning your craft. now they are seemingly systematically doing away with the intense work to get a 5 year professional degree to make you employable and replacing it with a useless 4 year degree and an even more useless 2 year masters degree. is the dean of UC a working architect or just an academic? the older i get the more i miss good ol' fashion common sense.

I like the 5 year model. But I still think the 4 year is just as good - not only because i have one. The 4 year allowed me to work in construction in a capacity beyond grunt/ laborer summer help. it also allowed me to work at different firms doing a wide variety of project types from single family homes, strip retail, hospitals, multifamily housing and international office towers in metric. I couldnt have done any of this if I was going for a masters until I would theoreticaly have been about 25. Which means I would effectively be starting my real education.

Lifes short people - too short for flippant designer wnat a be's to be deciding how the profesion will educate its next generation. These people are scum.

I've been following this thread and thought I'd drop in here. Last year I was in a 4 year program (CU Boulder) and decided I should try to transfer to a good 5 year program with a good *cringe* ranking. Hence my moving to Eugene OR to start on residency because its supposed to be so much 'better'. After seeing both, I feel like both give a good understanding, where the 5 year may be more technical, but the 4 may give more opportunity to explore different components of architecture e.g. social, community participatory design, etc. Of course both can be implemented in both programs, I think I'm actually going back to CU next year, it seems like more diverse studies going on (plus i miss CO and if i stay here they're making me start over in the frosh studios) anyway I feel that 4 years with 2 years in grad school at a school that isn't super theoretical and values know-how and theory, it should be just as good as any 5 year if not better since you got a more diverse education to start. I could be wrong, maybe I'm too naive..

didnt someone get fired from SciArc for writing a critical piece on Eric Owen Asshole?

I do not have a dog in this fight, but I've been involved in my share of curriculum battles and want to clarify a few things regarding 4 and 5-year degrees

Statements in the Enquirer article I think are provided more for sensation than information, "...the undergraduate program was shortened from six years to as little as four..." and "The professional degree was moved to a master's program that can take as little as two years." "As little as" betrays a bias in the article on the part of the reporter, seeming to imply that the program is giving out the same degree in less time.

There was a national arms-race type escalation in degrees a few years ago, when a few schools started rewarding MArchs directly to their their graduating students. There is a lot of reasons behind this, one of which that many universities and accrediting bodies specified how many units would make up a bachelors degree and how many would equal a masters. Most 5 year BArch programs came much closer to the unit requirements for the masters, so that's what they started giving out (of course, this was also beneficial to recruiting).

Then some universities (namely U of Hawaii) started handing out an entirely new degree: Doctor of Architecture (DArch), since everybody was handing out MArchs. Around '03 and '04 "nomenclature" became the big administrative buzzword among architecture school administrators and ultimately, NAAB made public the possibility that they would no longer accredit new BArch programs and that all existing programs convert to some form of MArch (Like the fairly common 4+2). This lead to an outcry across the country and NAAB backed down. Many people, however think the writing is on the wall and that the 5-year BArch is doomed to extinction.

As far as the 4+2 goes, the idea behind it is that a student can leave after completing the 4 year BS degree, if for some reason they believe they do not want to pursue a career as a professional architect or for the simple reason that they want to go to grad school somewhere else. Many graduate programs have to offer three tracks- one for non-architecture degree holders, one for 4-year degree holders and one for the MArchs- not exactly an administrative nightmare, but definitely a less-than-ideal situation.

I was just sent the news that David Niland passed away last night. I don't know any details but I think he had heart surgery in the past couple of years. He was a great teacher.