Measure twice, cut once

It was remarkably easy for us at ArchVoices to uncover the AIA's error by spot-checking with a couple state boards last Friday. The image at the beginning of this issue is a fax from the Louisiana state licensing board, with the handwriting confirming the date of initial registration for each of the names on the AIA's corrected list. A similar fax from the Kansas state board appears at right. These documents and similar correspondence with 13 state boards illustrate that the AIA's numbers are still 15-20% off.

Again, it took us one phone call to realize that there was still a problem. But it would have been extremely tedious for the AIA to check each name on their list this way. To do so, someone would have had to verify almost 700 names (1,525 the first time around) with 55 individual licensing boards. However, if there were a single clearinghouse for licensure information and data across the country, it would have been far easier to verify the AIA's list of names--either for our ArchVoices volunteers, or for the AIA itself.

Managing a changing profession

Simply put, there is no clearinghouse or database with information about architects who got licensed in 2003 or any other year. As a profession, we don't know when those people graduated, how many are minorities or women, how many went to international schools, where they live now, whether they have NAAB-accredited degrees, how many completed IDP, how many had to re-take which divisions of the ARE, what type of work they do, or anything else that might be useful in competently managing a changing profession. Again, we don't even know how many of them joined the AIA. And we certainly don't know whether any of these numbers are increasing or decreasing.

All anyone in the profession knows about the architects who got licensed in the U.S. last year is that there were 2,470 of them, representing a 12% decrease from 2002--the very first year NCARB started reporting even this overall number. This aggregate statistic is buried in a 100+ page printed document that many state licensing board members don't even read.

What do other professions do?

National Council of Bar Examiners
www.ncbex.org/stats.htm

National Council of State Boards for Nursing
www.ncsbn.org/testing/psychometrics_nclexpassrates.asp

How would that help?

Statistical reports like those mentioned above would not by themselves have helped the AIA verify how many newly-licensed architects joined in 2003. However, were such detailed data regularly collected, publicized, and tracked over time, the AIA would have been far more likely to notice the problem in the first place.

The AIA's recent error is both an example of a much larger problem in the profession and a consequence of that problem. If architecture is ever to become a truly knowledge-based profession, we should start by getting serious about knowing ourselves.

Know thyself

2,500 years ago, Socrates used this phrase to make the point that we need to understand the extent of our own ignorance. In that regard, it is important to first acknowledge what the profession doesn't know about its newest members, and by extension, its future.

As always, we welcome your thoughts by email at editors@archvoices.org.