by Michael J. Monti

We are hoping that a number of programs may wish to take the next step to allow students the ability to complete the entire IDP process as well as the Architect Registration Examination® (ARE®) over the course of their studies.

– NCARB

If you haven’t seen it already, NCARB has asked for a formal response from accredited and candidate schools about its Licensure at Graduation initiative. So like it or not, it’s happening, and here’s why you should be talking about this complex issue at your school and why you should tell NCARB what you think.

Schools influence the profession when we speak clearly. This happens at the local level and at higher scales. The problem is that clarity overcomes complexity only through sustained and open debate. When we in academia don’t air out the issues, our beliefs become muddled, and inevitably the result is that the profession will “influence” us, as NCARB’s initiative may do.

Their Request for Interest and Information asks schools to report by October 31 on their “interest level and readiness to design and develop an integrated path leading to licensure at graduation encompassing the NCARB requirements of education, experience, and examination.”

Since its announcement in June, the Licensure at Graduation initiative has drawn both praise and jeers. Some of the jeers misunderstand the purpose of the initiative, which does not intend to replace existing architecture curricula or paths to licensure. Other jeers come from the realization that we don’t exactly know what this initiative means for architecture schools, faculty, and students. Licensure at Graduation poses a series of interconnected questions whose answers we know we don’t know:

  • How many students would do it?
  • Would students have to stay in school longer?
  • Are enough jobs available to support every student who wants one? (Paid jobs, ahem.)
  • If other schools do it, will my school lose a competitive edge if it does not?
  • If other schools do it and compromise their commitment to educating students, rather than training them, will architectural education suffer?
  • Will those jobs allow students to satisfy IDP requirements by graduation?
  • Will my curriculum change radically to satisfy the training needs of graduates?
  • Is a license to design buildings too small a target to shoot for in architectural education?
  • What does it mean to ‘teach to the test’?
  • Will my institution permit it?
  • What role will my state registration board have in making this work?
  • What does this do for my NAAB accreditation?

And so on…

One merit of NCARB’s approach is that it wants to understand what its integrated path means for your school. They need to hear from schools that will not pursue this option as much as from those that will.

Licensure at Graduation will not be for everybody, but until NCARB (and the rest of the profession for that matter) understands how and why schools will and will not pursue this outcome, relative silence from the schools will generate confusion and will hamper schools’ ability to work with the profession over the long term.

We have long known that the Licensure at Graduation path existed. We have talked for decades about integrating education and practice. Now the fallen logs and overgrowth have been cleared through sustained efforts to think about redundancy and complementarity in NAAB Student Performance Criteria, IDP requirement areas, and ARE divisions.

It is time to use this opportunity to respond to NCARB and to share those responses among our members, so that we can continue talking not just about licensure, but about practice in all its forms.

 

NCARB’s Request for Interest and Information can be found here. If you wish to also share your school’s response with ACSA, we will make an aggregate report during the November 6 Administrators Conference session on Licensure at Graduation. Send your response to Michael Monti, mmonti@acsa-arch.org. These will be kept confidential, unless otherwise specified.