Studying Architecture in Australia: Part 1

Basic structure of education

Studying to become an architect in Australia invariably requires two degrees, in a 3+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 late-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 2007 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 the schools

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 Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ), produced annually by the Graduate Careers Council of Australia (but, oddly, only available from the Australian Vice-Chancellor's website link above).

This is a survey of all the previous year's graduates in every discipline in every Australian university, as to their opinions on their recent education. As far as we know, this survey is unique in the English-speaking world. The United Kingdom is only starting its own exercise, Teaching Quality Information, in 2005; well behind Australia. We do not know of equivalents in Canada or the United States.

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 year¹.

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 2009, we will provide charts for each qualification.

How the students rank the Australian schools

We have the CEQ studies from 1994 to the most recent available (2006—produced April 2007) editions before us. Here is our interpretation of the results from our summary charts.

• Adelaide. Up and down. Never a great performer. Had a brief peak in 2002, but on the slide since then. Ambience: The small city of Adelaide in South Australia is famous for grotesque unsolved murders, so if you are looking for some Sweeney Todd excitement, this is the place to go. Supply your own razor.
• Canberra. Consistently ranked a bottom-feeder by its own graduates for more than a decade. You won't be able to learn much from its website, either. This is the Mary Celeste of Australian architecture schools: in our last sweep in 2006 we couldn't even find out who works there. If anyone can show us a good reason to study architecture at Canberra, we'd like to hear about it. Ambience: The city of Canberra is a vast park with some buildings in it. If you like acres of native bushland and a nightlife that even nuns find boring, this is your town.
• Curtin. 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. Ambience: The city of Perth is a mining boom town: think Las Vegas with iron ore.
• Deakin. Usually ranked very well by students. Not exactly a great intellectual leader, as shown in our research rankings, but does that matter? Ambience: Located in a regional centre.
• Melbourne. A lot of smart people there in the best university in country (ANU's silly pretensions not withstanding). We would definitely suggest this school for those of a more intellectual bent. Ambience: Cosmopolitan.
• 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. Ambience: Cosmopolitan.
• Newcastle. During the 1990s its mentoring program was acclaimed. Students have trashed it since its peak in 2001. What went so wrong? We don't know. Ambience: Located in a regional centre.
• Queensland. An enviable reputation in mediocrity. Nothing wrong in being average: at least you are consistent. Some interesting rises in student happiness from 2003. Put this one on your list. Ambience: Brisbane is a big country town that you can traverse in a few minutes.
• Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The acquisition of Australia's greatest architectural academic, Jenny Taylor, was a major coup some years ago. But now she's semi-retired. Very erratic, and definitely on the nose. You can do better. Ambience: See above, Queensland University.
• RMIT University. Every so often shows signs of genius, only to sink back to the middle of the pack. Ambience: Cosmopolitan.
• South Australia. We freely admit that we despise this school since it threatened legal action against us in 2004 for just telling the facts. Don't expect to hear anything good about it from us. From our own limited correspondence with this school's litigious staff and vile students, this is your school of choice if you are a rude pig-ignorant delicate petal committed to blaming the universe for your own inadequacies.
• Sydney. We discuss our experiences at our old alma mater here. It used to pride itself more on how many government grants it could get rather than the quality of its teaching. The reforms of the early 2000s promised well, but have only seen declining student satisfaction after a false apogee. Ambience: Cosmopolitan.
• 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 to restore its reputation as a cool place to study. Ambience: Hobart is a very, very small city, in a very cool climate.
• University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). On one of its periodic depressions. You can do better. We have much more information here. Ambience: Cosmopolitan.
• Western Australia. Too little information to make an assessment. They converted their bachelors into a degree previously unknown to science, the graduate bachelors. This simple boondoggle rendered them impervious to comparison in the CEQ statistics, since no other school had such a qualification. Plenty of other places to choose from is our advice.