Proposal more Arb than good

Instead the proposal is to provide other trainee professionals with a top-up route to joining our profession. There is nothing wrong in allowing engineers to become architects but if they can do it after two years of study, why should others have to slog through five years?

What Arb should be doing is considering making the title available for those who have completed a three-year degree course and a suitable period of practical training. The RIBA should bring architectural technologists into the fold with some kind of membership. Qualifications in the architectural profession need coherence so the public can understand them.

I am concerned about Arb’s motive. Is it just after more members by selling off the title?

Chris Stone
Derby

The idea of entering part II from other undergraduate degrees may present those candidates with a false pathway. Other than a very talented few, graduates in non-related subjects would soon find themselves struggling against their part I peers.

Arb needs to think more radically and maybe about a unified four-year course. Bath and Cardiff do this and having studied at Cardiff there is scope to shave more time off the course if compensated for by more teaching hours.

Ralph Kent
via bdonline

The forthcoming EU Professional Qualifications Directive somewhat circumscribes opportunities for reform if UK architects wish to practice within the EU.

Its main features include the creation of a European professional card for those professions that request it and an update of the minimum training requirements for architects to gain automatic recognition in another member state: either five years of study or four years of study complemented by two years of traineeship. At best, a reduction of one year in the academic training of an architect will be possible.

Walter Menteth
via bdonline