Aussie Architecture Students Rate their Schools: Part 1

Basic structure of education

Studying to become an architect in Australia invariably requires two degrees, in a 3+1 year off+2 or 3+3 structure. The first three-year degree is a bachelors, usually intended to prepare you for the professional qualification, but also let you branch off into quite different careers in construction, planning or landscape design. As in the UK, this degree is obtained in an architecture school. The American concept of gaining a generalist bachelors majoring in certain subjects before moving on to a special architecture school does not exist.

Until the mid-2000s, almost all the second degrees {the professional or terminal architecture degree} in Australia were at the bachelors level. They followed the United Kingdom model of a double bachelors, or bachelors and diploma. From that point, the schools moved to a second masters degree, in a sad example of architectural credential inflation. Regardless, the second degree allows you to sit the examinations required to call yourself an architect. You can read more on our page about working as an architect in Australia.

Australian architecture schools versus the rest

We have a great admiration for the North American tertiary education systems. But – it must be admitted – that in North America the tremendous diversity of tertiary systems means that while that region has probably the finest universities on earth, it also has a large collection of duds. One of the virtues and vices of the Australian academic system is that there are no truly bad universities, but also no truly great ones. You won't find many Nobel laureates wandering around an Australian campus, but you will always get your money's worth.

In short, there are far less risks and gambles involved in choosing an Australian university. You can see that on our page discussing how the world's architecture schools rate on research.

Measuring student satisfaction

So where should you study? Depends who you ask.

• Ask the students. They want a satisfying, challenging, useful and equitable learning experience. We discuss how happy Aussie architecture students are compared to their compatriots in other disciplines here.
• Ask their future employers, the architecture firms. They want solid, skilled and cheap labour.
• Ask the architecture teachers. They want tenure, bright students and time to work on their masterpiece.
• Ask the universities that house the schools. They want academic papers and books, and a flood of research money from the government. We provide a separate ranking table about this here.

On this page we provide the latest data on what the students think of their education. You have a problem with our methodology, do your own research.

The CEQ study

We used for our data the annual Australian Course Experience Questionnaire.

The survey uses several different scales to measure how satisfied graduates are with their courses. We used the Overall Satisfaction Index (OSI) from this survey to make our analyses, for pass bachelors degrees. We converted these to ranks for each year.

2009 newsflash. Universities Australia has decided to suppress the data from the 2008 CEQ, and for the prior 14 years! For more information, read our page on what Australian universities don't want you to know

Some caveats

The key point is that this methodology measures what students think of their recent education. Not employers, not parents, not people who graduated thirty years ago. Let us emphasize that:

• The survey says nothing about a school's research performance or community service. But then, if you are a student looking for a school, you don't care much about those, anyway.
• This is what students think: whether their perceptions are valid, and what employers think, are other issues.
• Graduates' ratings can be very volatile: one year's grads may give a much worse or better rating than just the next year's crop.
• The survey polls the prior year's graduates. They are really assessing their experience of several years. There is therefore an inherent time-lag in the data: a lot of grudge factor, and many memories of happy times. A melange.

Complications in future rankings

Until the late 2000s, all architecture professional degrees in Australia were awarded at the bachelors level. Most schools have moved to offer the professional degree at a masters level, a pathetic example of credential inflation, if ever there was one. This will complicate the student satisfaction ratings until about 2012, when all graduates will be at the masters level. It is risky to compare CEQ data between degrees. Say schools A, B and C offer professional degrees at the bachelors level; and schools X, Y and Z offer them at the masters level. The data available from the CEQ does not allow us to readily compare satisfaction between degrees, without some really tricky statistics. Given the caveats mentioned above, we are not even going to try. From 2012, we will provide charts for each qualification.

Student satisfaction ratings

We have the CEQ studies from 1994 to the most recent available. Here is our interpretation of the results from our summary charts.

• University of Adelaide. Up and down. Never a great performer. Had a brief peak in 2002, but on the slide since then. Location: Small, perfectly formed capital of a small state.
• University of Canberra. Consistently ranked a bottom-feeder by its own graduates, until 2007, which makes us very suspicious. A new regime, perhaps? You won't be able to learn much from its website. This is the Mary Celeste of Australian architecture schools. After four years of searching, we finally discovered who worked there just in time for our 2009 research rankings sweep. If anyone can show us a good reason to study architecture at Canberra, we'd like to hear about it. Location: The city of Canberra is a vast park with some buildings in it. If you like bushwalking, but a nightlife that even nuns find boring, this is your town.
• Curtin University of Technology. Varies from strong to middling, which is no bad thing. Put Curtin on your list of possibles if you want a solid education without the intellectual foo-fa. Location: The city of Perth is a mining boom town: think Las Vegas with iron ore.
• Deakin University. Consistently ranked very well by students. Not exactly a great intellectual leader, as shown in our research rankings, but does that matter? Location: Regional centre, only an hour or so away from somewhere interesting.
• University of Melbourne. A lot of smart people there in the best university in country (ANU's silly pretensions not withstanding). Although students rate it as mediocre, we would suggest this school for those of a more intellectual bent. Location: Cosmopolitan.
• University of New South Wales (UNSW). A very large school traditionally regarded as a perfectly competent sausage-machine. You want a job, you go to UNSW. Student ratings plummeted in 1999, and are only now clawing their way upwards. There may be happier places to attend, like Dotheboys Hall. Location: Cosmopolitan.
• University of Newcastle. During the 1980s and 1990s its mentoring program was acclaimed. Students have trashed it since its peak in 2001. A weird statistical spike in 2008 does not give us any confidence. What went so wrong? We don't know. Location: Regional centre, only an hour or so away from somewhere cosmopolitan.
• University of Queensland. Rated in the upper-third since 2003. Put this one on your list. Location: Brisbane is a big country town that you can traverse in a few minutes.
• Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Very erratic, and definitely on the nose. You can do better. Location: See above, University of Queensland.
• RMIT University. Every so often shows signs of genius, only to sink back to the middle of the pack. Location: Cosmopolitan.
• University of South Australia. We hold our tongue¹.
• University of Sydney. We discuss our experiences at our old alma mater here. Completely sclerotic, we regret to report. All the senior staff have been there for decades, and are a scant few years if not months from retirement. Try applying in 2015, when they are all gone. Location: Cosmopolitan.
• University of Tasmania. Had an excellent reputation from 1985–1995 as a nurturing and creative environment: you could have been in the sixties. Subsequent volatility seems to have subsided. Since 2004, students have rated it well. Location: Launceston is a small town, in a very cool climate. If you decide to go internet dating, make your criteria very, very broad.
• University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). Perfectly average. You can do better. We have much more information here. Location: Cosmopolitan.
• University of Western Australia. Too little information to make an assessment. Some years ago they converted their bachelors into a degree previously unknown to humanity. This simple boondoggle rendered them impervious to comparison in the CEQ statistics, since no other school had such a qualification. With the late-2000s Australian transition to a Masters as professional qualification, they can once again be subject to scrutiny. Plenty of other places to choose from is our advice. Location: See Curtin, above.