In March 2025, RAND released the Building Impact report, highlighting gaps between architectural education and practice. The independent study—which featured surveys and interviews with hundreds of architecture students, faculty, and practitioners—identified several key issues related to the challenges that architecture students and recent college graduates face as they transition from school to the working world.
These challenges include issues related to student debt, internship availability, and the usefulness of the subject matter being taught in architecture school. As NCARB continues exploring opportunities to create more accessible pathways into the profession, findings from the Building Impact report will shape our research and development. Here are five key takeaways related to emerging professionals:
1. The average income for both licensed and unlicensed practitioners—especially recent graduates—is not proportional to the costs of pursuing a career in architecture.
Throughout the Building Impact report, students and practicing professionals identified a mismatch between compensation and the cost of an architectural degree. Student debt levels for many emerging professionals are not manageable based on the average starting salary for recent graduates. According to the report, many M.Arch. graduates would fail a debt-to-earnings test—a measure of graduates’ federal loan payments compared to their median salary.
Exploring opportunities to lower the amount of debt undertaken by architecture students is essential to ensuring that licensure candidates can afford to stay in the architecture profession.
2. Emerging professionals need a stronger emphasis on developing strong skills in design software in order to increase their competitiveness on the job market.
Practitioners and students reported that experience with modern design software tools, particularly Revit, is essential knowledge for landing a job in the architecture profession—but most students report that they aren’t taught these programs while in school.
And while educators tended to cite on-the-job training as an opportunity to gain these skills, many students reported that the internship opportunities available required that applicants already have experience in tools like Revit, which creates a barrier for those who don’t learn technical skills during their education.
By making time for teaching and developing these skills in architecture school, educators can help better prepare licensure candidates to use the design skills they’ve been taught in a practical setting.
3. Licensure candidates need greater support when it comes to finding internships.
Participants in the Building Impact study generally agreed that internships are critical for developing hands-on skills and transitioning to the workforce—but many students and practitioners suggested that schools should play a bigger role in helping emerging professionals find the right job opportunities.
Through sustained partnerships with firms or local professional organizations, schools could create the structured support that their graduates need to succeed in their chosen field.
4. Students often felt they weren’t sufficiently prepared at the beginning of their architecture studies to understand the path to licensure.
While some students reported receiving guidance from their educators, many indicated that a lack of licensure awareness was a barrier to entering practice. NCARB and NOMA’s Building on Belonging data indicates that this lack of awareness can prevent students from making strategic, informed decisions—such as reporting experience early, choosing a licensure-focused internship, or overlapping requirements when available.
For licensure candidates, engaging with their local licensing advisors, mentors, or professional organizations early in their careers may help them better understand and navigate the licensure process.
5. Many emerging professionals reported receiving essential support from professional organizations that helped them transition into the professional world.
For students and practitioners, engaging with their local professional association—such as the American Institute of Architects (AIA) or National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA)—was essential when it came to bridging the gap between education and practice. These organizations often provided participants with access to internships, mentorship, or skill development opportunities that helped them become more competitive.
These findings highlight the importance for licensure candidates of building a local network, as well as the necessity of architects investing in their local emerging professional community.
About the Building Impact Report
The outcome of data collected through surveys and focus groups with architecture students, faculty, and practitioners, the Building Impact report provides key insights into the accessibility, affordability, and applicability of architectural education. The study was commissioned by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and NCARB, with support from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), to better understand the current relationship between education and practice.
The Building Impact report is a direct follow-up to the 1996 Building Community report (also known as the “Boyer Report”), which identified several areas where education was misaligned with practice at the time and provided recommendations to build a stronger relationship between the two. Now, nearly 30 years later, the findings of the Building Impact report demonstrate that many of those gaps still exist.
Read the full report at www.ncarb.org/RAND.
