IDP: how fair or useful is the process?

Anonymous' comment on a recent blog post has given me much excellent food for thought. Two of his/her points from that comment must be considered together:

Second comment. I think the current IDP process is very unfair. An intern in the northeast can work at a firm that doesn't support its goals and the intern will not gain good experience. An intern in the south can work at a firm that supports the goals of the IDP and will gain a career advantage over the intern in the northeast.

Third comment. I think the AIA needs to provide firms with more incentives for helping interns finish the requirements of IDP. Right now, all of the IDP requirements are for the interns. The firms are not required to help interns complete the IDP.

We kind of have to discuss these points together, as they intertwine a bit. The reason that firms aren't required to support IDP is because IDP is a voluntary process that each state's architectural board either does or does not mandate as a requirement for attaining licensure in that state. For example, my state of Colorado does not specifically require that an intern follow IDP in order to be eligible for licensure in that state--as a matter of fact, with enough work experience and the right tests, you can be a licensed architect in the state of Colorado with just a high school diploma.

Furthermore, the AIA is a professional organization, not necessarily a governing body. Membership in AIA is voluntary, so if the AIA provides incentives to firms for supporting IDP, that only affects firms whose owners are members of AIA. If an intern works for a crappy, sweatshop-of-a-firm whose owners aren't members of AIA, than they give less than one-tenth of a hoot about those incentives. It would be more helpful if each state's architectural licensing authority provided some mandate for following IDP and then required that firms support that structure. However, bear in mind that having such a requirement would also mean that interns would all have to join NCARB, which means paying NCARB that $60 a year or $90 a year or whatever it is nowadays to maintain your NCARB record. And I know of a lot of interns who write that check to NCARB with gritted teeth every year, so that might be a hard concept to sell. At the same time, I like the idea of making reciprocity even easier--if everyone's following IDP, then there's no reason to give NCARB a wad of cash each year to maintain your license--you have the record already. (Hmm...this brings on more talk....)

As for the fairness of the IDP process, I'm not sure what an intern's locale has to do with the quality of their internship experience. Two architecture firms across town from each other can have differing levels of support for their interns, and therefore the interns at Firm ABC get a much better experience than the interns at firm XYZ, though they're both located in, say, San Antonio. What would make the IDP unfair is the state-by-state adoption of it, and then the lack of support for it in some states or even some firms. The process in and of itself is neutral--work this amount of time, get these credits, and then you're ready to sit for the exam. What has made IDP unfair in some sense here lately is the economy--interns get laid off and lose valuable time and precious credits while sitting on the sidelines of their profession. (And I've had people ask about whether NCARB gets it or not--I'm getting y'all an answer...) IDP is as fair as it can be on its own, but some other rules could stand to be put in to place to make sure all interns are getting a fair shot at success.

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