Tuition Tuesday - Debt, Compensation, and an Uncertain Future
Posted: June 21st, 2011 | Author: Jonathan Bahe | Filed under: Compensation, Education, Leadership, Uncategorized | Tags: Tuition Tuesday |Third post in this multi-part series on increasing college tuition, with a special emphasis of course on the impact on the design professions. Today’s topic is about the growing disconnect between tuition and salary.
The statement that “there is no money to be made in architecture or design” has long been shared with students, and unfortunately in many cases accepted as fact. For many years, issues of unpaid and underpaid internships caused significant hardship within the profession. Over the last 15 years however, the profession has done an admirable job of nearly ridding itself of the practice - with some exceptions - and recognizing the contributions of young staff. In the most recent DesignIntelligence Compensation & Benefits survey, the mean annual salary for year 3 interns, just finishing IDP, was $44,750 plus a mean bonus of 2.7%. A big jump from 1996 when DesignIntelligence reported a mean salary of $28,760. In fact this growth even beat inflation.
So the good news is, we are slowly making strides in what we pay recent graduates and interns. The not so good news, the cost of education is greatly exceeding these gains. According to the College Board, tuition and fees at public universities have surged over 130% over the last 20 years. At the same time, the maximum amount of government-subsidized loans that a student is eligible to receive for a four-year degree has remained $23,000 since 1992
Median income has remained roughly the same since 1988, while tuition and fees has more than doubled. Source: CNN Money
This post isn’t meant to argue that recent graduates and interns are underpaid - we can save that discussion for another time. However, what is increasingly apparent is the disservice to recent graduates who spend thousands of dollars to get college degrees, and then find themselves in a work force which doesn’t compensate accordingly. A push towards increasing the value and relevancy of the degree is necessary, and requires a joint effort between the academy and professional practices. Then perhaps the conversation can become more about value and less about cost. By recognizing value-in (tuition) and increasing value-out (relevancy), we can grow our profession in more sustainable ways, and support the next generation of leadership.
I like the line “A push towards increasing the value and relevancy of the degree is necessary”. The general public does not understand our profession and Hollywood does nothing to help represent architects. You ask the average Joe and Mary on the street and they will think architects get paid well. Competition is real stiff right now and people are trying to get the lowest fee, that does not help our income at all, in fact, I don’t think I have ever done a project where I was paid for all the time I put into it. The problem is Architect provide a service, designing buildings to comply with local and state codes not to mention ADA and others codes, and this is all to define a standard of construction and keep people safe, the importance and value of this is overlooked by people. People think buildings are like cars, ya know, just toss in the sports package and the satellite radio, put on some mud flaps and call it a day. Every building is different, every building has its complexities and guidelines to follow to make it work. I feel architecture is undermined by people who “know a guy who can build that for 1/3 of the cost”, but they are not getting the value of safety and orchestration we bring to the table. The AIA does very little to help our profession, where are the commercials on tv saying, “don’t build this (insert bad example ie mic mansion) build this (insert good example, non mic mansion)” followed by pictures of an architect, engineer and owner etc…sitting in front of a planning board, looking at design and construction drawings, walking the site, explaining how things work, making the building energy efficient, with the final closing remarks “paid by the American institute of Architects” This would help with the “relevance of the degree”, help the professional practice, stop telling us to educate the client, have the AIA do it.
Mean is different from median; which does the graph represent?
@Mark, I mistakenly mislabeled the graph previously. It is now correctly labeled as median income. Thanks for pointing it out!
How can people justify spending thousands upon thousands of dollars for theater or art degrees? I can’t remember the ratio but it is amazing the amount of people who pay for colleges degrees and don’t pursue a career in that career field.