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 within architectural education related to program requirements, curriculum, and relevance.
Currently, requirements for architecture program accreditation are set by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). These requirements shape the courses and curriculum taught at accredited architecture programs. Findings from the Building Impact report highlight areas where change in accreditation requirements are needed—by revisiting these requirements, NAAB can ensure curriculum is tied to modern practice and relevant post-graduation. Here are five key considerations from the Building Impact report for accreditation requirements:
1. 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. Data from NCARB and NOMA’s recent Building on Belonging report 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.
Although licensure education is incorporated into program criteria, NAAB’s requirements don’t specify the depth to which this information must be taught. Strengthening this requirement could ensure that students know what steps they need to take post-graduation.
2. Architecture programs should better incorporate internships into their curricula.
Students, educators, and practitioners who participated 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.
Considering how this could be incorporated more strongly into the NAAB Conditions for Accreditation could ensure that schools are creating the structured support that their graduates need to succeed in their chosen field.
3. Both students and practitioners desire a greater emphasis on technical skills and hands-on experience during architecture school.
Current tensions between what should be taught at school versus what should be learned on the job leave graduates underprepared to transition from student to working professional. Only half of students felt their education adequately prepared them in technical skills, such as documentation and building technology systems—areas that practicing professionals indicated were very important in practice.
Additionally, students reported that a lack of exposure to modern design software tools while in school negatively impacted their job prospects, as even internships required students to already have experience with tools like Revit.
The current requirements for NAAB accreditation leave significant room for schools to decide how much to focus on technical skills—revisiting this requirement may help ensure that programs are preparing licensure candidates to use the design skills they’ve been taught in a practical setting.
4. Students and practitioners don’t feel that program curriculum is well-aligned to industry trends.
While more than half of faculty participants (51%) felt that their program’s curriculum was well-aligned to industry trends, only 19% of students agreed. In general, students and practitioners—especially early-career professionals—were more likely than educators to see academia as misaligned with industry trends, especially when it came to the amount of focus placed on topics like architectural history and sustainability.
For example, most practitioners (89%) reported that academia provides too much coverage of architectural history, compared to just 26% of educators. Meanwhile, 77% of educators believed that knowledge of architectural history was useful for practice, compared to 41% of professionals. Faculty were also overall more likely than students to report that climate change was a central or high focus of the curriculum, outpacing students by roughly 20 percentage points.
Including emerging trends as part of required studies rather than optional studies could help graduates become better prepared to navigate current topics in modern practice.
5. Longer architecture degree requirements create financial barriers that keep students from pursuing a career in architecture.
The current path to licensure typically includes a five- or six-year degree in architecture from a NAAB-accredited program—because there are no four-year NAAB-accredited programs. Many participants in the Building Impact study noted that this requirement means graduates are more likely to incur high levels of student debt, creating a barrier that keeps many would-be architects out of practice.
Exploring opportunities to offer a four-year accredited degree could lower the cost of entry into the architecture profession and broaden the pool of potential students.
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.
