I'm a final-year MArch student at Iowa, a school where we have a decently sized MArch program but a much larger BArch program. At my school and all schools discussed/addressed/visited in my program, Masters students are very much in the minority, if perhaps disproportionately represented in terms of influence on the program. Moreover, every book, article, news piece, website, etc. that I've read on the subject of Architecture education has assumed that the readers (or the subject matter) are BArch students in a five-year degree, not MArch students coming from another academic background.

All of this had led me to assume that BArch students and programs are the majority in the USA, and MArchs the minority - so I was quite surprised when I recently learned that the reverse is true. I suppose I can say mea culpa on letting my specific academic environment skew my view, but that still doesn't explain why media coverage of the experience of Masters students is so scanty. Is it because our attrition rate means that BArchs are all that most people see? Was there a time in very recent memory when they constituted a vast majority? I'd be interested in any insights on the subject.