Responsibilities and services of architects on a given building project have gradually decreased along with their percentage of the construction budget. As a result, it has become more difficult for firms to train architectural graduates. The Intern Development Program (IDP) was created to bridge the gap between architectural graduates and professionals. It has done this to an extent, but it is by no means perfect. I will touch on three ways that the IDP can be improved in my opinion. The supervision of the entire process must be improved to a more direct way by an unbiased party. The quality of training must also be improved. Lastly, the intern title must be reconsidered to reflect more the responsibilities of a typical intern in the architectural field. This issue must be expanded to encompass a larger problem, making the architect title unique to architects.

The IDP is organized today for the intern and supervisor to document the intern’s work experience. Yet, there are required experiences that are very difficult to perform by an intern in the three or four years that the intern is required to complete the IDP, such as contract
negotiation and office management, especially in a larger firm. If left alone, a professional architect could spend the majority of their lives working for a firm before they are ever involved in the aforementioned responsibilities. So the supervisor and mentor are sensitive to the intern’s situation, and no one has anything to lose by signing away work that was never experienced.

This problem can solved by assigning a neutral person or organization to oversee all parties involved more closely than the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) ever could. One such party exists in the institutes of higher education, architecture
professors. By assigning a professor unknown to all parties, unbiased discretion is assured. Although they would be put in a difficult position by asking professors to add this responsibility to their teaching responsibilities, universities would then hold a greater involvement in the IDP program further bridging the gap between student and professional.

The university’s involvement in the IDP could be furthered by establishing a coop program. This would also fill in some of the holes left by the traditional IDP where professionals do not have the time or finances to fully train an intern. Adding two years to a four year
undergraduate degree to encompass field experience could also allow two years of work experience to be removed from the IDP, and it would all be supervised.

Lastly, the appropriate title for an intern working in the architectural profession has been debated for a number of years, probably since it was first established. The problem I have with it is that I perform all, if not more, tasks than my architect employers. So, from my point of view, the largest significant difference between interns and architects is their registration. That difference is not accurately represented in the intern title. Intern implies someone with no experience. We all enter the IDP with some experience, since we are required to have architectural degrees in order to complete it. Perhaps levels of intern experience, and as a result titles, must be established as other architectural firms have already done.

My biggest problem with not being allowed to use the architect title before being licensed is that so many other professions not related to the building industry use it freely. If one were to search for a job in the field of architecture on a job search website, results range from web architect to hardware or computer architect. My argument is this: if the architect title is so coveted, why can everyone else use it? As responsibilities, salaries and reputations of architects are being reduced, from the intern’s view, the requirements to become an architect are increasing. There is less motivation for an intern to complete, or even start, the IDP and write the Architectural Record Exam (ARE). If architectural organizations are going to prevent interns from using the architect title, they must prevent everyone else from using it who are not registered to practice architecture.

While I have focused on some negative aspects of the IDP and the architecture profession in general, I feel it important to note that it would not be possible to identify the negatives without there being positives to compare them. I do not take joy from pointing out flaws in the system, but identifying those flaws is the first step in correcting them. I want to see the architecture profession as a whole recover because practicing architecture is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do.