Lulu's Mailbag: Is our profession in trouble?

I received a great email from Matt Arnold, the architect who also runs Stairway to Architecture (a great site--I love his "Dear Boss" letter). At the end of his provocative and interesting email, Matt asked: As I look at the landscape surrounding schools, internship, and practice, I'm very distressed for our profession. I'm wondering what your perspective is.

his email was so interesting that I felt compelled to turn my response into a post. (Matt, I will also email you back personally.) My short answer to your email is this: to me, the glass is half full, but I'm not sure what it's full of just yet.

Matt's website points out that though roughly 7,000 graduates from architecture schools each year, it appears that only about 4,000 are getting licensed each year. That means that we're not replacing the licensed architects that retire, die, or leave the profession to start a new career or maybe just hop in and out of rehab. While I've always known that in the back of my wee little head, I'm especially startled by that fact nowadays. Between the economy being in the tank and the continued hazing that interns endure (but probably not at Matt's firm--the "Dear Boss" letter makes me want to work there, even if he doesn't like headphones), I believe our profession is going to lose some really good people, and that 3,000-person gap will become wider not just in quantity but also in quality.

The quality of interns--and therefore architects--is of utmost concern to me. Project managers and bosses, in general, continue to give interns a "you need to pay your dues" attitude instead of truly integrating them into all levels of the practice, not just the drawing and the occasional site visit to go field measure something. There are managers who believe that because they were hazed they must haze the new kids in the office infuriate me. News flash: we don't have time to relegate an intern to three-plus years of CAD Jockey or Revit Jockey status--s/he needs to understand specs, go to meetings, deal with consultants and clients, help you put together proposals, and so on. The future of your firm and indeed your profession relies on this.

Matt mentions that his research shows that the average length of internship in New York (the state, I presume) is 11 years. There may be several reasons for this, but I'm betting that one of the reasons is that firms who need good staff will pay top dollar in a town that has a high cost of living and lots of competition for the best interns. And oddly enough, those who do this are on my list as well. Yes, we all know that interns (and architects in general, up and down the ranks) are underpaid, but when you pay an intern mad amounts of cash, where is the incentive to take and pass the ARE? So interns spend years not getting licensed, just making money hand over fist, and suddenly they find themselves unemployed in this economy, pushing 40, and unlicensed. You know how that concerns me. My husband has a friend who is a good architect with coveted design skills. He hopped through firms in a major city for most of the 2000s (about one every 12-24 months) until he was making $82,000 a year, unlicensed. Guess who's unemployed now? (And the fact that he still complains about "how poorly architects are paid" makes me want to stick a drafting pencil in his eye, but I'll spare you that rant.)

My hope for the future of architecture as a profession is that we do a few things, primarily:

1. Stop talking, designing, writing, and speaking for other architects and start doing all those things for the public, for average everyday people who use the spaces we make and don't understand what the word "architectonic" means and don't really care. As I've said before, architecture the profession is about everything but you. Remove your ego from what you design.
2. Shift our thinking from an industrial-era workplace to an information-age workplace. Interns are not disposable, replaceable widgets--they're people. Consider the advantages of a ROWE workplace.
3. Bridge the gap between the generations and their skill sets. Managers need to include interns in all facets of running a project and running a firm--sharing that knowledge is the only way to truly gain their respect. Interns need to include managers in how technology is changing the way we produce our work--in many ways for the better. For example, many of today's project managers that worked in CAD back in the day have no idea how Revit works today, and many of their demands on interns are based on how CAD used to work. Revit solves many of the problems we had in CAD, but it also makes a few things more difficult.

That's a short list, but I think it sums up my outlook on the profession so far. What about you? How does the profession look--and feel--to you?