I would like to point out the surge of registered architect licenses issued in New York state over the past two years. New York state issued just under 600 licenses in each year of 2005, 2006, and 2007. There was a noticeable increase in 2008 to 730 and again in 2009 to 912 newly issued licensed individuals. Those are pretty impressive increases of 130 and 312 licenses respectively. It seems likely this surge in licenses is from people succeeding in completing the old (3.1) version of the architect registration exam. Test takers didn’t want to loose credit for a passed exam and passed all 9 parts before the June 2009 deadline.
There could be other reasons for the increase. Such as more unemployed architects resolved to pass the exam. Intern architects at the end of their internship period, took advantage of concurrency and passed the exam. But I doubt these reasons are attributable to the bulk of the increase of licensees. The upgrade to a new exam seems to have caused an increase in licensed architects (in New York at least) at a time in the economy when architects have fewer job opportunities.
Of course we’ll have to wait and see if the amount of licensees issued for 2010 reverts back to under 600 a year. Concurrency and new ways to verify and claim experience with IDP have broadened the licensing opportunities for interns. Some of the gains in licenses issued over 2008 and 2009 may be permanent. On the other hand, lower exam pass rates may negate those gains. A difficult job market may turn some away from pursuing an architectural license. We’ll see. I do hope by the time the amount of licenses issued in 2010 are out, my license will be included in those numbers.
You can verify the license statistics above at the NYS Office of the Professions here. Also download the pdf file of charts of New York state license data summarized by Matthew Arnold of Stairway to Architecture. He has also summarized information from Nebraska and Oregon.
PPI
Sketchbook Project