Measure of Competency - NCARB Numbers

Let's talk about a little bit about the numbers.

NCARB publishes every year what they call NCARB By The Numbers. This is just statistics about

• how many licensure candidates there are

• how many people complete the exam

• how many people are in the AXP

• how many people are in architecture schools

• how many people go from architecture school to AXP to getting a license

And they divide it up by all the statistics, and I'm going to be comparing these.

In the 2024 data, that was fairly recently released, NCARB published that over 25,500 candidates reported hours in the AXP, a little under 5000 started the AXP this year, and a little under 5000 ended the AXP this year. That's really on track with the number of people who go on to actually take the exam and become licensed.

Roughly, in the United States and the NCARB jurisdictions, about 5000 people become licensed as an architect somewhere each year.

So that's a pretty consistent number. It's been consistent, but took a dip during COVID. NCARB suggests that the numbers of people who are in the AXP, have been more affected by COVID than the people taking the exams.

NCARB reports that 4.9 years is the average time it takes someone to complete the AXP. Keep in mind, there's 3170 hours required, and a year of working full time is about 2000 hours. So 4.9 years is almost 10,000 hours of work time to get 3170 hours of actual AXP hours documented in each of those six categories. That's not very efficient.

Another more startling number is that the average person starts the AXP at age 24, and the average person ends the AXP at age 30. That's six years of difference. So there's a little disparity between the six years and the 4.9 years.

There are some encouraging numbers here; one in three completed the AXP in less than four years. So maybe there's some glimmer there that at least a third of you are making some intentional progress toward this goal. And another glimmer is that women and people of color are more likely to complete the AXP in less time. That would be interesting to dig a little deeper into that sometime.

The important take away is the time it takes to actually complete the AXP I think is way too long, and I think that there needs to be a program or a system whereby mentors and mentees can use to make sure that the time that they're logging as experience hours actually matters. So this is the main point for today.

Make it matter.

Make every hour matter, because 4.9 years or six years is way too long. So let's cut that down. Let's make that a lot faster. One in three going less than four years. Good job. Let's get this down to one and three in two years. How about that?