Last month’s disappointing Supreme Court decisions in the cases regarding student loan forgiveness and affirmative action have prompted a response from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in unison with other leading industry groups, including the AIAS, ACSA, and NOMA.
The former comes just months after the AIA published a study indicating that (as many already knew) student loans disproportionately burden both women and borrowers from traditionally underrepresented groups, respectively.
“The AIA believes diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging enriches not only architects and design professionals but also the entire world through the built environment they design,” part of the AIA statement on student loans reads. “Protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public is vital to the role that architects play in shaping our collective future. The AIA is committed to supporting a diverse profession that reflects the communities being served. Thus, equitable access to the profession is essential.”
Related to this statement and remarking on the value of educational access and inclusion, the AIA’s comment on affirmative action also included a call for change that would diversify the professional ranks, noting that “diverse student perspectives and lived experiences will not only enrich the next generation of architects and design professionals but also shape our world through the built environment they will design.”
“[The AIA] and other allied organizations recognize that even with affirmative action, the number of minorities enrolled in our nation’s colleges and universities is disproportionate to our demographics. By removing these protections, we are concerned that the impact of underrepresentation may worsen outcomes for everyone.”
Potential next steps to be taken at this time remain unclear, though protests reflecting what some are concerned is now a crisis within higher education are likely to crop up once the academic year commences in the fall.
8 Comments
question-- >>> what is the "" AIA "" doing about AI - ?
Nothing. The crazy high dues and insular nature of the organization result in the majority of AIA's membership and leadership being wealthy and privileged firm owners. These folks are salivating at the prospect of replacing vast swaths of production staff with AI.
The AIA is a lost cause, harboring perverts, bums, communists, globalists, robots, idots, and morons. They are reaping what they have sown. The AIA is incahoots with the NCARB, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations to help license architects from countries with economies operating at compensation levels more than a whole order of magnitude lower than in the US. These architects send in their box tops to the NCARB and pay fees for certificates and then get state and territorial licenses to set up storefront shops in the US and sell professional services at below bargain basement prices and then put out the work back home where professional staff earns less than a third of the US Federal Minimum Wage Rate. Standard AIA documents, running 15 to 50 pages of largely confrontational language too complex for a Harvard lawyer to understand, promote work stoppage, litigation, additional services, mediation, arbitration, liquidated damages and every other cockamayme tom foolery having no place in ordinary meetings of minds to produce honest work. They are spinning out of control. Is it any wonder that the publishers of reams of Standard Forms of Agreement for every kind of condition from soup to nuts comes forth and supports a set of circumstances where if someone signs a note for a loan to go to school that when if comes time to pay back on the loan, it's a proposition of, "OH! Wait a minute. We KNOW you signed the damned thing. We just don't think you ought to be required to pay it back." Come again?
This is good stuff ---!!!!!!
What about all these illegals doing CAD / BIM work from India--not the USA ?
The internet has enhance the Virtue Signals of Woke Capitalism to a non- profit business and opens the Architecture Slave Trade to any one who can read English........
You want to rephrase that, or are you just a xenophobic prick?
why p[ay pal $ your Friends who don't stand UP---- ?
AIA thinks they are over the Supreme Court ? Go F yourself please.
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