i understand the precedent set by law schools.....but seriously....
one can't compare the two professions in terms of their degrees until we can start to fairly compare their salaries...we all know that the two are imcomparable on many levels
aside from that, what about all the post-pro MArch's?...this would seem to put them at a disadvantage; at least on paper....i myself finished with a post-pro MArch, and when combined with my undergraduate degrees i have over 200 hours, shouldn't that qualify me for a D.Arch too?
Yeah... I don't see what the big deal is about. It's not increasing the caliber of professionals, only the perceived importance of a credential. Where I went to school, there was certainly nothing in the 3 1/2 programs equivalent to a dissertation or even serious multi-semester research topic, rather the extra 1 1/2 years were spent making up undergraduate classes.
Architecture school is hard, but it is in no way equivalent (except maybe in cost) to a Ph.d.
this guy is crazy. i don't care how many undergrad hours of biology or english you took....architecture takes a long time to leanr and integrate. when you start a 3.5 year m.arch, you often are learning how to hold a pencil, learn the difference between a pixel and a vector, rudimentary construction and spatial skills etc: architecture's equivalent of kindegarten. i think the 3.5 year degree is too short already-again it simply takes tome to be exposed to and integrate history, construction, design, codes, energy systems, etc. the profession has to pick some new battles, but this degree semantic tango ain't one of them.
Now that more and more schools are insisting that faculty members hold doctorate degrees, changing the M to a D would be an interesting move. It would allow schools to continue to hire young people who are design and practice focused rather than phd's.
after a little time to digest this whatever-it-is, change to the nomenclature, i have to agree with switters. i myself received an undergrad M.Arch (gotta love SCAD). now, while i personally think myself fully deserving of my degree (we were required to research, print and publish our thesis for graduation) i don't think that anything positive could come of changing to a D.Arch instead of M.Arch. colleges that require PhD for teaching positions do so because they desire that higher level of study and dedication to the study of architecture. there are just as many, if not more, colleges (both private and public) that only require an M.Arch for a teaching position. but this is usually accompanied by a "term of sevice" in the profession as well. i don't believe one is necessarily better than the other. i agree that a Master's level education coupled with several years of professional practice is what it takes to make a "good Architect". switters also has a point that this is not a battle for the architecture community to take up. simply changing the nomenclature will not magically increase the quality of the education. an M.Arch is more than sufficient for our profession. if it's a matter of money, start your own practice and bill $120 an hour.
the criteria for acceptance into most undergrad programs are more lenient and less stringent then acceptance criteria for most graduate programs. (even those programs that only graduate 1/4 of all students). So those with 'undergrad M.Arch' are doing their part to dilute the perception of our profession.
"dilute the perception of our profession"? just because i did not have to take the GRE to get my M.Arch does not make me less qualified than someone who went to a traditional grad program. the program i went through for my degree was just the same as yours, i simply accomplished it in 5 years instead of 6 or 7.
what dillutes the perception of our profession is bad architects and bad schools. and they occur on both the graduate and undergraduate level.
oh yeah, and deciding to tag new letters onto the names of existing degrees can't be very good for the general perception of our profession. we have an accreditation board so 'stringent' that it hands out letters all willy-nilly without mandating any structural changes to educational curriculum. that must look really *great* to outsiders.
plus, clients don't care, and universities who might hire faculty are going to know the difference between a real doctorate and a DArch. do we really think they will be fooled? they're academics...that usually means they're not so stupid to be fooled by semantics. usually.
there is absolutely no reason to have a d.arch. there is no reason to have an m.arch. i would hope that students would realize this and revolt against the ridiculous necessity to get a masters degree in a field that doesn't need it and doesn't reward it financially.
but, retro, there are very few schools left that offer a traditional five year professional bachelor's degree in architecture. if one is to be licensed in any state they will need to achieve at least a M.Arch. i have several colleagues in that position now who are heading back to school for a M.Arch. but if one has no intention of getting licensed, then, you are right, the m.arch is not required and is therefore a waste of time. but, as i like to say about a lot of things, it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. just my humble opinion
Wait, some schools offer a 5-year M-Arch? For chrissake.
I agree with vado, completely. Do the minimum to get registered, then do so. Even then you won't necessarily be a "good architect" as we all know schooling and registration is no measure of talent, only of persistence. And until this changes, the value of our profession will continue to devolve (but not only for those reasons).
every state accepts the BArch for licensure. and the moratorium on new BArch programs has been lifted. for the record, existing BArchs, or the ability of their graduates to become registered architects, has never been threatened. there was a moratorium on NEW BArch programs, but that is now over.
if you have colleagues with BArchs who are heading back to school, they're probably going back to get an MArch II, which isn't a professional degree and therefore has no effect their ability to get licensed.
Well Steven I want my non-accredited Cranbrook MArch to be accredited retroactively because I deserve it too! Then I'm going to take the exam over again because I didn't try hard enough the first time and yet I still passed!
Also, ice9, everything you've said on this topic has been right on. Thanks for your levelheadedness about it all. And to reiterate: clients don't care what our degrees are. They do want us to be licensed.
yes, my point is which i realize now that i didn't make is that requiring an march is a scam and it is not needed to practice in this field particularly when schools are less and less in tune with the reality of the architectural profession.
...and i'm sorry to whoever mentioned this above, but a 5-year M.Arch does NOT equal a the 4+3.5 or 4+2 M.Arch.....at least not in terms of overall education......yes, both routes will get you licensed, but true education is a matter of time and experience; which is an additional reason that the D.Arch is ridiculous. there is a reason why PhD's take about 7 yrs to complete...
??
cynic, but if you add the number of years that students take architectural studios, 5-year programs have 5 years, while 4+2 programs have 2, and 4+3.5 programs have 3.5.
I've always wondered how people with different bachelors degree (other than architecture) spend only 2 or 3.5 years to get masters degree and think they look down 5-year programs.
actually, from what I can see most 4+2 programs have four years of studio. Otherwise I agree completely. It always bothers me when some people with M.Archs get up on their high horse and start talking shit about the B.Arch program, because they only had to go through hell for 3 years, while I did it for 5.
you guys misunderstand....i'm not talking about the number of studios. there are many different arrangements in that department....i'm talking about overall time spent learning. it doesn't have to be just architecture. for example, someone spending 4 years studying philosophy, then 3.5 studying architecture would likely be , in my opinion (provided that they were serious the whole time), more thoroughly educated....simply because of the time and experience factor. this of course is not a rule, but my point is that real education is not how many studios or technical courses you take, but how TIME you actually spend educating yourself.
this is perhaps for a different argument, but i also think that those with degrees from different disciplines (art + architecture, philosophy + architecture) benefit from the diversity of their studies, whereas a 5-year MArch as a one's only degree doesn't offer that breadth of knowledge, precisely because they have spent 5 years only in studio, structures, and digital design....
again, i'm not trying to take a shot at anyone personally, these are just my thoughts on the level of education an architect should have...
I see. I got your point, cynic, and I agree.
If NAAB dudes are really into these nomenclature, they should handout degrees at the end of EVERY YEAR, like;
Year 1 : Janitor
Year 2 : Coffee Maker
Year 3 : Messenger
Year 4 : Model Maker
Year 5 : CAD Monkey
Year 6 : Pretender
Year 7 : Intern Sidekick
Year 8 : Intern
Year 9 : what are you still doing hereR
Year 10: AIA Member
its fun to stick a finger in a hornets nest and see what happens....
education is only a small part of what makes you a good architect. as a predictor of who will be 'good', the school you go to has a rough correspondance in the quality of architecture you will make. not a direct correlation, but enought to be statistically significant. so joe blow who went to harvard is more likely to be a 'better' architect then dick small who went to a mediocre state tech school. There are exceptions, but you need to be a smarter/better student first to get into harvard and smarter people tend to make 'better' architects...
go ahead and prove me wrong by finding a contemporary architect that make great buildings and went to a shit institution. No, i'm not talking about 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago (that rules out ando and wright).
Well, Rick Joy has a 5-year BArch 1990 from University of Arizona. His work is pretty fantastic.
treekiller I do like and agree with your comment from above about admissions requirements differing at undergrad and grad levels. But the truth is this conversation feels so much like a pissing contest that I can't stand it.
For two people competing for one tenure-track teaching job, if one has a newfangled retroactive DArch and the other has a traditional doctoral degree I can see that this would be an issue. One of them has clearly committed to a deeper level of inquiry in service to the discipline. Outside of that scenario, I don't see that this "proposal" to the NAAB by some guy whose name sounds like the guy's who played Kramer on Seinfeld has any serious merit.
BTW, it's now Doctor Steven Ward to all you younguns.
how about you don't get any f*#^ing degree, regardless of its B., M, D, nomemclature until you are competent. (and in doing so bag this bogous IDP crap). if you can't put a building together, you don't graduate and cannot practice. that would send a stronger, more directed message. if you can do it in a year, great, good work genius. if it takes ten, so be it. give me a stamp, not a diploma-ticket to an unfrtuantely structured, brow beating 'internship.'
silly Americans - no offense. I was in DC in '00 for the NAAB conference when they talking about the abandoning of the 5yr B.Arch (I mostly ignored the reasoning, as I was in the 5th year of my 4+2 and they couldn't help me now). But at the end this guy came on talking about doctoral programs +2 D.Des, +2 D.Arch, +1 to whenever you finished Ph.D (Architecture).
But there is nothing that says you must take 7 years to finish a Ph.D - I've known people who left high school entered *** university and left with Ph.D in Biology after 5 years....I was still in undergrad and a little bitter.
What's my point...I don't have one. But I fought with the decision about whether to do a D.Des or Arch...definately prefering them over a PhD simply because I was more interested in the implementation or manifestation of thoughts and theories which so far none of the PhD programmes seem to offer.
america is already so schizo over its architectur-nominclaturing, it would just be another personality to deal with. b.arch, m.arch. d.arch. aia, riba, jia. whatever. they mean very little in the end. what you DO counts. and the rest is jest pissin in the wind.
treekiller someties education matters, sometimes it don't. gates dropped out remember. not cuz he was stupid. and anyway, lack of ivy ed don't mean stupid. think of forest gump and what his mammy allas tol him..."stupid is as stupid does." no trooer words spoken.
for those who don't know, i am doing traditional type phd right now, so may be biased (but ain't, cuz i don't take my degrees that serious).
jump, in true archinect-edness, I have to say that your posts over the last few months have brought me much closer to your way of thinking. Though I'm incredibly proud of being a registered architect ( and think everyone else out there in archinect-land should go through the hoops to achieve this goal as well), whenever I get hung up in nomenclature lately I think of you and remind myself that the proof is in the work, and that's all that matters. Thanks.
I would find the D.arch a bad move. From my experience within working in practice and working in a university, The D.arch would be a move to specialize yourself to become an consultant in a particular area that you research rather than contrubite to a wide range of architectural intrests. And unfortunatley Universities that are looking to hire "architects with doctorate degrees" are more intrested in increasing the amount of reasearch their faculty does. Now that isn't necessarily a bad thing if you are MIT but for most school I see this equation:
More reasearch = lower quality teaching
Less reasearch = higher quality teaching
the reason I say this is because the college of architecture I work for just prided themselves on having the most Doctorate holding faculty members of any other college of architecture and the most research grant proposals submitted of any other college of architecture.
All the while the students here are suffering and the work they produce sucks. The few quality professors that are here don't even have a masters, the have a bachelors in architecture and have been doing kick ass work in their careers and now are imparting their exprience and knowledge to their students.
J, no worries. i'm used to people taking shots at scad. my ex used to say that it sounds like an STD - "SCAD", like something curable with antibacterial hand soap or something. but, to expound on what tempdrive, above me, has said: SCAD requires all professors seeking a position in the architecture department to hold a minimum of a masters degree or professional equivalent and to be a licensed professional in their field. during the time i attended we only had one or two PhD on staff and one was the chair of the department.
i also have to agree with liberty, and just about everyone else. switching to a doctoral nomenclature is only going to hurt the profession. if you want a doctorate that badly obviously you're much more interested in the research of architecture rather than the practice and therefore should stay in academia. for the rest of us, i agree that education does not adequately prepare us for the practice of architecture. and perhaps it shouldn't. Darwinism at it's finest, let the strong survive. like someone said earlier, designing a building is one thing, but if you can't build it what good is it?
clients care about constructibility and profit. giving them that while at the same time giving them good and sustainable design is the mark of a successful architect.
Jan 31, 07 10:45 am ·
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D.Arch
i understand the precedent set by law schools.....but seriously....
one can't compare the two professions in terms of their degrees until we can start to fairly compare their salaries...we all know that the two are imcomparable on many levels
aside from that, what about all the post-pro MArch's?...this would seem to put them at a disadvantage; at least on paper....i myself finished with a post-pro MArch, and when combined with my undergraduate degrees i have over 200 hours, shouldn't that qualify me for a D.Arch too?
i think NAAB needs to rethink this one...
Yeah... I don't see what the big deal is about. It's not increasing the caliber of professionals, only the perceived importance of a credential. Where I went to school, there was certainly nothing in the 3 1/2 programs equivalent to a dissertation or even serious multi-semester research topic, rather the extra 1 1/2 years were spent making up undergraduate classes.
Architecture school is hard, but it is in no way equivalent (except maybe in cost) to a Ph.d.
this guy is crazy. i don't care how many undergrad hours of biology or english you took....architecture takes a long time to leanr and integrate. when you start a 3.5 year m.arch, you often are learning how to hold a pencil, learn the difference between a pixel and a vector, rudimentary construction and spatial skills etc: architecture's equivalent of kindegarten. i think the 3.5 year degree is too short already-again it simply takes tome to be exposed to and integrate history, construction, design, codes, energy systems, etc. the profession has to pick some new battles, but this degree semantic tango ain't one of them.
Now that more and more schools are insisting that faculty members hold doctorate degrees, changing the M to a D would be an interesting move. It would allow schools to continue to hire young people who are design and practice focused rather than phd's.
what would be the diff between the DArch and the DDes?
in most cases, i think i'd have less respect for someone with a D.Arch...
i am a newb.
what's D.Arch?
B.Arch. = Bachelor of Architecture
M.Arch. = Masters of Architecture
D.Arch. = Doctorate of Architecture
and i assume that D.Arch is different from Ph.D
after a little time to digest this whatever-it-is, change to the nomenclature, i have to agree with switters. i myself received an undergrad M.Arch (gotta love SCAD). now, while i personally think myself fully deserving of my degree (we were required to research, print and publish our thesis for graduation) i don't think that anything positive could come of changing to a D.Arch instead of M.Arch. colleges that require PhD for teaching positions do so because they desire that higher level of study and dedication to the study of architecture. there are just as many, if not more, colleges (both private and public) that only require an M.Arch for a teaching position. but this is usually accompanied by a "term of sevice" in the profession as well. i don't believe one is necessarily better than the other. i agree that a Master's level education coupled with several years of professional practice is what it takes to make a "good Architect". switters also has a point that this is not a battle for the architecture community to take up. simply changing the nomenclature will not magically increase the quality of the education. an M.Arch is more than sufficient for our profession. if it's a matter of money, start your own practice and bill $120 an hour.
the criteria for acceptance into most undergrad programs are more lenient and less stringent then acceptance criteria for most graduate programs. (even those programs that only graduate 1/4 of all students). So those with 'undergrad M.Arch' are doing their part to dilute the perception of our profession.
"dilute the perception of our profession"? just because i did not have to take the GRE to get my M.Arch does not make me less qualified than someone who went to a traditional grad program. the program i went through for my degree was just the same as yours, i simply accomplished it in 5 years instead of 6 or 7.
what dillutes the perception of our profession is bad architects and bad schools. and they occur on both the graduate and undergraduate level.
oh yeah, and deciding to tag new letters onto the names of existing degrees can't be very good for the general perception of our profession. we have an accreditation board so 'stringent' that it hands out letters all willy-nilly without mandating any structural changes to educational curriculum. that must look really *great* to outsiders.
plus, clients don't care, and universities who might hire faculty are going to know the difference between a real doctorate and a DArch. do we really think they will be fooled? they're academics...that usually means they're not so stupid to be fooled by semantics. usually.
there is absolutely no reason to have a d.arch. there is no reason to have an m.arch. i would hope that students would realize this and revolt against the ridiculous necessity to get a masters degree in a field that doesn't need it and doesn't reward it financially.
but, retro, there are very few schools left that offer a traditional five year professional bachelor's degree in architecture. if one is to be licensed in any state they will need to achieve at least a M.Arch. i have several colleagues in that position now who are heading back to school for a M.Arch. but if one has no intention of getting licensed, then, you are right, the m.arch is not required and is therefore a waste of time. but, as i like to say about a lot of things, it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. just my humble opinion
Wait, some schools offer a 5-year M-Arch? For chrissake.
I agree with vado, completely. Do the minimum to get registered, then do so. Even then you won't necessarily be a "good architect" as we all know schooling and registration is no measure of talent, only of persistence. And until this changes, the value of our profession will continue to devolve (but not only for those reasons).
i want my tulane degree, which was changed from b.arch to m.arch retroactively, changed to a d.arch! i deserve it!
every state accepts the BArch for licensure. and the moratorium on new BArch programs has been lifted. for the record, existing BArchs, or the ability of their graduates to become registered architects, has never been threatened. there was a moratorium on NEW BArch programs, but that is now over.
if you have colleagues with BArchs who are heading back to school, they're probably going back to get an MArch II, which isn't a professional degree and therefore has no effect their ability to get licensed.
Well Steven I want my non-accredited Cranbrook MArch to be accredited retroactively because I deserve it too! Then I'm going to take the exam over again because I didn't try hard enough the first time and yet I still passed!
Also, ice9, everything you've said on this topic has been right on. Thanks for your levelheadedness about it all. And to reiterate: clients don't care what our degrees are. They do want us to be licensed.
yes, my point is which i realize now that i didn't make is that requiring an march is a scam and it is not needed to practice in this field particularly when schools are less and less in tune with the reality of the architectural profession.
...and i'm sorry to whoever mentioned this above, but a 5-year M.Arch does NOT equal a the 4+3.5 or 4+2 M.Arch.....at least not in terms of overall education......yes, both routes will get you licensed, but true education is a matter of time and experience; which is an additional reason that the D.Arch is ridiculous. there is a reason why PhD's take about 7 yrs to complete...
??
cynic, but if you add the number of years that students take architectural studios, 5-year programs have 5 years, while 4+2 programs have 2, and 4+3.5 programs have 3.5.
I've always wondered how people with different bachelors degree (other than architecture) spend only 2 or 3.5 years to get masters degree and think they look down 5-year programs.
actually, from what I can see most 4+2 programs have four years of studio. Otherwise I agree completely. It always bothers me when some people with M.Archs get up on their high horse and start talking shit about the B.Arch program, because they only had to go through hell for 3 years, while I did it for 5.
you guys misunderstand....i'm not talking about the number of studios. there are many different arrangements in that department....i'm talking about overall time spent learning. it doesn't have to be just architecture. for example, someone spending 4 years studying philosophy, then 3.5 studying architecture would likely be , in my opinion (provided that they were serious the whole time), more thoroughly educated....simply because of the time and experience factor. this of course is not a rule, but my point is that real education is not how many studios or technical courses you take, but how TIME you actually spend educating yourself.
this is perhaps for a different argument, but i also think that those with degrees from different disciplines (art + architecture, philosophy + architecture) benefit from the diversity of their studies, whereas a 5-year MArch as a one's only degree doesn't offer that breadth of knowledge, precisely because they have spent 5 years only in studio, structures, and digital design....
again, i'm not trying to take a shot at anyone personally, these are just my thoughts on the level of education an architect should have...
I see. I got your point, cynic, and I agree.
If NAAB dudes are really into these nomenclature, they should handout degrees at the end of EVERY YEAR, like;
Year 1 : Janitor
Year 2 : Coffee Maker
Year 3 : Messenger
Year 4 : Model Maker
Year 5 : CAD Monkey
Year 6 : Pretender
Year 7 : Intern Sidekick
Year 8 : Intern
Year 9 : what are you still doing hereR
Year 10: AIA Member
its fun to stick a finger in a hornets nest and see what happens....
education is only a small part of what makes you a good architect. as a predictor of who will be 'good', the school you go to has a rough correspondance in the quality of architecture you will make. not a direct correlation, but enought to be statistically significant. so joe blow who went to harvard is more likely to be a 'better' architect then dick small who went to a mediocre state tech school. There are exceptions, but you need to be a smarter/better student first to get into harvard and smarter people tend to make 'better' architects...
go ahead and prove me wrong by finding a contemporary architect that make great buildings and went to a shit institution. No, i'm not talking about 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago (that rules out ando and wright).
Well, Rick Joy has a 5-year BArch 1990 from University of Arizona. His work is pretty fantastic.
treekiller I do like and agree with your comment from above about admissions requirements differing at undergrad and grad levels. But the truth is this conversation feels so much like a pissing contest that I can't stand it.
For two people competing for one tenure-track teaching job, if one has a newfangled retroactive DArch and the other has a traditional doctoral degree I can see that this would be an issue. One of them has clearly committed to a deeper level of inquiry in service to the discipline. Outside of that scenario, I don't see that this "proposal" to the NAAB by some guy whose name sounds like the guy's who played Kramer on Seinfeld has any serious merit.
BTW, it's now Doctor Steven Ward to all you younguns.
deadlines make me pissy- we're issuing a progress set on thursday.
I like rick joy's work and I respect U of AZ- they have consistantly been a strong program.
how about you don't get any f*#^ing degree, regardless of its B., M, D, nomemclature until you are competent. (and in doing so bag this bogous IDP crap). if you can't put a building together, you don't graduate and cannot practice. that would send a stronger, more directed message. if you can do it in a year, great, good work genius. if it takes ten, so be it. give me a stamp, not a diploma-ticket to an unfrtuantely structured, brow beating 'internship.'
silly Americans - no offense. I was in DC in '00 for the NAAB conference when they talking about the abandoning of the 5yr B.Arch (I mostly ignored the reasoning, as I was in the 5th year of my 4+2 and they couldn't help me now). But at the end this guy came on talking about doctoral programs +2 D.Des, +2 D.Arch, +1 to whenever you finished Ph.D (Architecture).
But there is nothing that says you must take 7 years to finish a Ph.D - I've known people who left high school entered *** university and left with Ph.D in Biology after 5 years....I was still in undergrad and a little bitter.
What's my point...I don't have one. But I fought with the decision about whether to do a D.Des or Arch...definately prefering them over a PhD simply because I was more interested in the implementation or manifestation of thoughts and theories which so far none of the PhD programmes seem to offer.
.02 with change
rick joy also worked as a carpenter and a musician 10 yrs before he went to architecture school.....again: diversity, time, and experience
if darch happens i will laugh my ass off.
america is already so schizo over its architectur-nominclaturing, it would just be another personality to deal with. b.arch, m.arch. d.arch. aia, riba, jia. whatever. they mean very little in the end. what you DO counts. and the rest is jest pissin in the wind.
treekiller someties education matters, sometimes it don't. gates dropped out remember. not cuz he was stupid. and anyway, lack of ivy ed don't mean stupid. think of forest gump and what his mammy allas tol him..."stupid is as stupid does." no trooer words spoken.
for those who don't know, i am doing traditional type phd right now, so may be biased (but ain't, cuz i don't take my degrees that serious).
jump, in true archinect-edness, I have to say that your posts over the last few months have brought me much closer to your way of thinking. Though I'm incredibly proud of being a registered architect ( and think everyone else out there in archinect-land should go through the hoops to achieve this goal as well), whenever I get hung up in nomenclature lately I think of you and remind myself that the proof is in the work, and that's all that matters. Thanks.
I would find the D.arch a bad move. From my experience within working in practice and working in a university, The D.arch would be a move to specialize yourself to become an consultant in a particular area that you research rather than contrubite to a wide range of architectural intrests. And unfortunatley Universities that are looking to hire "architects with doctorate degrees" are more intrested in increasing the amount of reasearch their faculty does. Now that isn't necessarily a bad thing if you are MIT but for most school I see this equation:
More reasearch = lower quality teaching
Less reasearch = higher quality teaching
the reason I say this is because the college of architecture I work for just prided themselves on having the most Doctorate holding faculty members of any other college of architecture and the most research grant proposals submitted of any other college of architecture.
All the while the students here are suffering and the work they produce sucks. The few quality professors that are here don't even have a masters, the have a bachelors in architecture and have been doing kick ass work in their careers and now are imparting their exprience and knowledge to their students.
J, no worries. i'm used to people taking shots at scad. my ex used to say that it sounds like an STD - "SCAD", like something curable with antibacterial hand soap or something. but, to expound on what tempdrive, above me, has said: SCAD requires all professors seeking a position in the architecture department to hold a minimum of a masters degree or professional equivalent and to be a licensed professional in their field. during the time i attended we only had one or two PhD on staff and one was the chair of the department.
i also have to agree with liberty, and just about everyone else. switching to a doctoral nomenclature is only going to hurt the profession. if you want a doctorate that badly obviously you're much more interested in the research of architecture rather than the practice and therefore should stay in academia. for the rest of us, i agree that education does not adequately prepare us for the practice of architecture. and perhaps it shouldn't. Darwinism at it's finest, let the strong survive. like someone said earlier, designing a building is one thing, but if you can't build it what good is it?
clients care about constructibility and profit. giving them that while at the same time giving them good and sustainable design is the mark of a successful architect.
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