Reflecting on the architecture curriculum through a survey on career switching

Oct 15, 2026

Deteriorating real-estate investment conditions in China have driven companies to move away from construction, shrinking the design market and reducing architects’ compensation. Many architects therefore switch careers to sustain prior living standards. Meanwhile, architectural education in China fails to integrate emerging science and technologies, leaving graduates facing a large mismatch between labor-market needs and school-provided competencies. An online survey examines current career-shifting conditions, analyzes education missions from 50 universities, and reviews detailed curricula at three top universities. The education boundary is recommended to be rebuilt by integrating new technologies, removing unnecessary content, and strengthening self-learning capabilities.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time35 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Online survey

Respondents’ situation

Conditions on career shifting

Reflecting on the architecture curriculum through a survey on career switching Shenghuan Zhao, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Enrico De Angelis, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Dongqing Ma, Dalian University of Technology, China Abstract Due to the deteriorating investment environment, many real-estate companies in China have started transferring their business out of the construction industry. This leads to the shrinkage of the design market and also architects’ salary. A great number of architects have switched career to maintain the same living quality as before. Meanwhile, architectural education in China is not able to integrate itself with emerging science and technologies, losing possibilities to explore new employment channels for its graduates. There is a huge gap between qualities needed in the current or future labour market and the architectural education in schools. An online survey was conducted to investigate the current state of architects’ career shifting, trying to expose the problem mentioned above. In the second part of this paper, education missions from 50 universities are analysed and detailed education curriculums from three top universities are scrutinised. At the end, the education boundary is suggested to be reconstructed from three aspects: integrating the emerging technologies; reducing unnecessary content; and training in self-learning skills. Key words architectural education; Architecture design; Architect; Education development; Building design; China Introduction The architect used to be a favourable career choice among young Chinese, due to the high salary and social identity. With regard to a ranking (Speiyou, 2013), in the year 2012, new architectural degree holders had the highest salary among different major graduates, amounting to 4453 Chinese Yuan per month. However, statistics from the biggest job searching website Jobhui, whose yearly salary data was based on more than 30,000,000 samples, show that since the year 2011 architects’ income has started decreasing (Figure 1) . By comparing the salary prediction of architects with the average number of all industries in Shanghai, the increasing unimportance of architecture as a career in the whole society can be confirmed. What is worse, some design companies were already unable to pay the year-end award which is a big part of income for Chinese architects, causing several scandals (ARCHCOLLEGE, 2016) . Under this macro environment, many architects switch their career fora higher salary and social identity. It is reasonable for architects to offer services that do not belong to their traditional duties but that are needed in the market (Jann, 2010) . Carnegie Foundation made a survey in the year 1996 and found that 22% of architecture graduates in one school switched careers (Ball, 2004) . Nevertheless, the swift development of building technologies actually already has brought many new possibilities for the architects, which still have not been realised by educators. Actually, the reality is even worse because architectural teaching is already lagging behind contemporary construction practice, due to most of the teachers lacking practical experience on real projects. Hence, students are getting the education which is already out of date in the job market, let alone those recently developed technologies. In order to deeply analyse this phenomenon and find some solutions, an online survey aiming to probe the architects’ career switching was published. Results of the survey shed a light on the gap between job market and school education. In the second part, this paper focuses on the boundary of education content, with a vision of the inadequacy and redundancy in the existing educational system. The whole study has significance in the development of architectural education and will be beneficial for educators and schools. 12500 11500 10500 Salary ( R MB ￥ ) 9500 8500 7500 6500 5500 4500 3500 Architect sal

FAQs

Why are many Chinese architects switching careers?

Deteriorating investment and shifting real-estate companies away from construction shrink the design market and reduce architects’ salaries. This contributes to architects leaving due to workload pressure and unsatisfactory compensation.

What problem does the paper identify in architectural education?

Architectural education in China is not well integrated with emerging science and technologies. The paper highlights a gap between qualities required by today’s and future labor markets and what schools deliver.

How was the online survey conducted and what is its scope?

The questionnaire was published on Sojump starting 8 February 2017 and shared via social media. By 8 February 2018, it collected 339 respondents from 28 provinces, with about 70% submitting via mobile phones and the remainder via computers.

Oct 15, 2026

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