Against Employability Keefer Dunn
As an educator and a practitioner of architecture, I’ve found that no phrase gets under my skin more than “the real world.” No three words have had a more deleterious effect on the debates about the relationship between architectural education, professional practice, and our professional associations. I’ve heard it from students (“these classes aren’t preparing us for the real world”), from educators (“our curriculum needs to focus more on preparing students for the real world), and practitioners (“architecture students are graduating with no understanding of the real world”). I find this phrase absurd. If the academy is in fact some kind of delirious fantasy world separate from reality, then I ought to be able to pay my seemingly very real student loan down with Monopoly money. But the ubiquity of the phrase begs the question: where the hell is this idea—that architecture education is somehow not real—coming from? The phrase must resonate with some deep-seated concerns in order to appear so naturally and widely as part of the lexicon. The use of the phrase “the real world” stands as a proxy for anxieties about jobs and the practical skills required to obtain them. These worries are not unfounded. To live as an architectural worker today means accepting a great deal of precarity and long working hours. That this earworm of “the real world” has wiggled its way into the collective brains of an entire profession and generation of students speaks to anxieties that are widespread. However, “the real world” as a phrase inadequately addresses these anxieties. It presumes by default that one must conform to some abstract, immutable status-quo in order to have a chance at doing just about anything. In “the real world,” the most important task of architects and students of architecture is to master the so-called “boring” components of architectural work—codes, rote details, technical drawings, 117
Against Employability Keefer Dunn
As an educator and a practitioner of architecture, I’ve found that no phrase gets under my skin more than “the real world.” No three words have had a more deleterious effect on the debates about the relationship between architectural education, professional practice, and our professional associations. I’ve heard it from students (“these classes aren’t preparing us for the real world”), from educators (“our curriculum needs to focus more on preparing students for the real world), and practitioners (“architecture students are graduating with no understanding of the real world”). I find this phrase absurd. If the academy is in fact some kind of delirious fantasy world separate from reality, then I ought to be able to pay my seemingly very real student loan down with Monopoly money. But the ubiquity of the phrase begs the question: where the hell is this idea—that architecture education is somehow not real—coming from? The phrase must resonate with some deep-seated concerns in order to appear so naturally and widely as part of the lexicon. The use of the phrase “the real world” stands as a proxy for anxieties about jobs and the practical skills required to obtain them. These worries are not unfounded. To live as an architectural worker today means accepting a great deal of precarity and long working hours. That this earworm of “the real world” has wiggled its way into the collective brains of an entire profession and generation of students speaks to anxieties that are widespread. However, “the real world” as a phrase inadequately addresses these anxieties. It presumes by default that one must conform to some abstract, immutable status-quo in order to have a chance at doing just about anything. In “the real world,” the most important task of architects and students of architecture is to master the so-called “boring” components of architectural work—codes, rote details, technical drawings, 117
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submittals, specifications, and project management. This notion is often coupled with a fuzzy idea that mastery of these boring skills will unlock career opportunities or better equip architects to sneak in the “fun” stuff (design, conceptual thinking, beauty). Posing compatibility with “the real world” as a goal means that one’s personhood is judged by the ability to conform in practice or appearance. The onus of change is on the individual, not the system, a system that is in fact very real but, crucially, not immutable. There are those who make a deliberate attempt to buck architectural conformity—be they architects trying to do work for the social good in a market that broadly doesn’t value it, workers in the architectural intelligentsia who are interested in fostering critical understanding of socio-economic systems, or those who simply value difference and novelty. These attitudes leave something to be desired, too. The urgencies of precarity often out-prioritize endeavors of critical theoreticians to understand the system that creates precarity in the first place, as well as the very real desire among most architects to work for the public good.1 Educators teaching at or beyond the fringes of readily applicable skills must justify their continued existence and relevance to “the real world” by making what often ends up being very weak case for the value of critical thinking in a job market that, for all the rhetoric about innovative disruption, doesn’t actually value it. The architectural outsiders who pride themselves on being apart from the conformist real world often perceive (consciously or not) their non-participation as a transgressive side in an agonistic relationship that is, in fact, completely one-sided (and hence not agonistic at all).2,3 There are small corners of architecture where radical ideas can exist and even propel a career, but attempts to push these ideas into mainstream consciousness and activity often fall short. Counterposing these radical ideas to the “the real world” can point to a schism but cannot explain its underlying causes.
1 Adjustments Agency, “Fuck It,” DUE, February 23, 2018, http://due.aaschool.ac.uk/adjustmentsagency/. An informal, insightful, personal outlook on living in the tension between critical thought and making a living. 2 There are several examples one could draw on here, but the one that jumps to the forefront of my mind is the US Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale which posited the Architectural Imaginary as an engine of change for Detroit without actually meaningfully engaging Detroiters or the socio-economic forces that precipitated disinvestment from Detroit. For more on this problematic see https://detroitresists.org 3 Markus Miessen, The Space of Agonism: Markus Miessen in Conversation with Chantal Mouffe (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012). Agonism can be broadly defined as the notion that conflict is a productive component of political processes. The idea of existing apart from mainstream activities or discourses so as to alter the status quo is by definition an avoidance of conflict.
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What we need, instead of this phrase, is a framework that can deepen our understanding of the very real socio-economic tensions in the discipline and how we might address them. We need new languages and concepts that can deepen these debates and connect them to larger structures and political struggles that exist beyond architecture. One such concept is that of “employability.” Employability is often proffered as a buzzword, but sociologists, human resource researchers, and public policy institutes take it quite seriously. The literature is surprisingly extensive and generally apolitical in spite of the fact that, as a concept, it is linked to third-way centrist politics and accompanying management ideologies.4,5,6 The definition used in British policy is fairly typical: “Employability means the development of skills and adaptable workforces in which all those capable of work are encouraged to develop the skills, knowledge, technology and adaptability to enable them to enter and remain in employment throughout their working lives.”7 My working definition approaches the same ideas but from the view of the worker: employability is the notion that one must always be striving to obtain and maintain a state of job-readiness regardless of one’s actual status as a worker. Once we look at the anxieties underlying notions of “the real world” through the lens of employability, the scope and nature of the problem come into focus. As I put it in the pages of Yale’s student journal, Paprika, firms put pressure on schools to train students in navigating a business paradigm that is unsustainable and ill-suited to the 21st century.8 Schools must ensure they are graduating employable students to keep a steady flow of recruits, since the pressure to be employable begins well before one is of a working age, and job placement statistics are an important recruiting tool for universities. Students must accept the “reality,” or else risk the kiss of death of becoming unemployable. Becoming and remaining employable is a nonstop task. The policy discussion is blind to the toll that constantly worrying about obtaining and maintaining employability and by extension, wages, food, and healthcare, takes on an individual. In this context, 4 Ricardo L. Antunes, The Meanings of Work: Essays on the Affirmation and Negation of Work. (Chicago: Haymarket, 2013). See chapter five for more on the continuities and economics of neoliberalism, third-way centrism, and management ideologies. 5 A Google Scholar search conducted in February of 2018 for scholarly articles with “employability” in the title returned 49,800 results. 6 Ronald W.Mcquaid and Colin Lindsay, “The Concept of Employability.” Urban Studies 42, no. 2 (February 2005): 197-219. 7 Ibid., 199. 8 Keefer Dunn, “Employability and Professional Practice.” Paprika! (December 2017), http://yalepaprika. com/employability-and-professional-practice/.
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submittals, specifications, and project management. This notion is often coupled with a fuzzy idea that mastery of these boring skills will unlock career opportunities or better equip architects to sneak in the “fun” stuff (design, conceptual thinking, beauty). Posing compatibility with “the real world” as a goal means that one’s personhood is judged by the ability to conform in practice or appearance. The onus of change is on the individual, not the system, a system that is in fact very real but, crucially, not immutable. There are those who make a deliberate attempt to buck architectural conformity—be they architects trying to do work for the social good in a market that broadly doesn’t value it, workers in the architectural intelligentsia who are interested in fostering critical understanding of socio-economic systems, or those who simply value difference and novelty. These attitudes leave something to be desired, too. The urgencies of precarity often out-prioritize endeavors of critical theoreticians to understand the system that creates precarity in the first place, as well as the very real desire among most architects to work for the public good.1 Educators teaching at or beyond the fringes of readily applicable skills must justify their continued existence and relevance to “the real world” by making what often ends up being very weak case for the value of critical thinking in a job market that, for all the rhetoric about innovative disruption, doesn’t actually value it. The architectural outsiders who pride themselves on being apart from the conformist real world often perceive (consciously or not) their non-participation as a transgressive side in an agonistic relationship that is, in fact, completely one-sided (and hence not agonistic at all).2,3 There are small corners of architecture where radical ideas can exist and even propel a career, but attempts to push these ideas into mainstream consciousness and activity often fall short. Counterposing these radical ideas to the “the real world” can point to a schism but cannot explain its underlying causes.
1 Adjustments Agency, “Fuck It,” DUE, February 23, 2018, http://due.aaschool.ac.uk/adjustmentsagency/. An informal, insightful, personal outlook on living in the tension between critical thought and making a living. 2 There are several examples one could draw on here, but the one that jumps to the forefront of my mind is the US Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale which posited the Architectural Imaginary as an engine of change for Detroit without actually meaningfully engaging Detroiters or the socio-economic forces that precipitated disinvestment from Detroit. For more on this problematic see https://detroitresists.org 3 Markus Miessen, The Space of Agonism: Markus Miessen in Conversation with Chantal Mouffe (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012). Agonism can be broadly defined as the notion that conflict is a productive component of political processes. The idea of existing apart from mainstream activities or discourses so as to alter the status quo is by definition an avoidance of conflict.
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What we need, instead of this phrase, is a framework that can deepen our understanding of the very real socio-economic tensions in the discipline and how we might address them. We need new languages and concepts that can deepen these debates and connect them to larger structures and political struggles that exist beyond architecture. One such concept is that of “employability.” Employability is often proffered as a buzzword, but sociologists, human resource researchers, and public policy institutes take it quite seriously. The literature is surprisingly extensive and generally apolitical in spite of the fact that, as a concept, it is linked to third-way centrist politics and accompanying management ideologies.4,5,6 The definition used in British policy is fairly typical: “Employability means the development of skills and adaptable workforces in which all those capable of work are encouraged to develop the skills, knowledge, technology and adaptability to enable them to enter and remain in employment throughout their working lives.”7 My working definition approaches the same ideas but from the view of the worker: employability is the notion that one must always be striving to obtain and maintain a state of job-readiness regardless of one’s actual status as a worker. Once we look at the anxieties underlying notions of “the real world” through the lens of employability, the scope and nature of the problem come into focus. As I put it in the pages of Yale’s student journal, Paprika, firms put pressure on schools to train students in navigating a business paradigm that is unsustainable and ill-suited to the 21st century.8 Schools must ensure they are graduating employable students to keep a steady flow of recruits, since the pressure to be employable begins well before one is of a working age, and job placement statistics are an important recruiting tool for universities. Students must accept the “reality,” or else risk the kiss of death of becoming unemployable. Becoming and remaining employable is a nonstop task. The policy discussion is blind to the toll that constantly worrying about obtaining and maintaining employability and by extension, wages, food, and healthcare, takes on an individual. In this context, 4 Ricardo L. Antunes, The Meanings of Work: Essays on the Affirmation and Negation of Work. (Chicago: Haymarket, 2013). See chapter five for more on the continuities and economics of neoliberalism, third-way centrism, and management ideologies. 5 A Google Scholar search conducted in February of 2018 for scholarly articles with “employability” in the title returned 49,800 results. 6 Ronald W.Mcquaid and Colin Lindsay, “The Concept of Employability.” Urban Studies 42, no. 2 (February 2005): 197-219. 7 Ibid., 199. 8 Keefer Dunn, “Employability and Professional Practice.” Paprika! (December 2017), http://yalepaprika. com/employability-and-professional-practice/.
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architecture’s traditionally sleepless and brutal studio culture has found new life. Whatever the origin of this studio culture, its continued presence has less to do with cultural inheritance and and more to do with the fact that conditions of society at present compel its continued existence, albeit with unrecognized changes to the underlying motives. Sleeplessness in the name of constant productive or consumptive activity is part and parcel of the neoliberal economy, not a unique feature of architecture school.9 NAAB policies designed to curtail the most extreme excesses of this negative culture have had limited impact because students themselves have internalized the need to constantly groom their skills-set and credentials in order to become employable.
past year, and 57% of interns indicated having sought additional training or exams to make themselves more marketable in the more competitive job market. The survey further noted that that the percentage of interns indicating that their compensation, professional satisfaction, and hours worked were all worse than expected had increased. 60% of interns indicate their career outlook to be worse than expected related to compensation.14
The results are predictably disastrous. A survey of 450 architecture students in the UK conducted by The Architect’s Journal (AJ) showed that “over a quarter of students surveyed (26 per cent) said they were receiving or had received medical help for mental health problems resulting from their course, while a further quarter of respondents (26 per cent) feared they would have to seek professional help in the future.”10 In the United States, a Center for Disease Control study ranked architecture fifth among over 450 occupations most linked to suicide.11 A survey conducted by the AIAS indicates that architecture students in the United States spend an average of 23 nights per semester working past 2:00 am, spending 31.8 hours per week on average on studio coursework alone, and averaging a measly 5.7 hours of sleep a night.12 As the commentary in the AJ study shows, the underlying cause of this mental anguish is overwork coupled with, and perhaps caused by, anxiety about finances, job prospects, and student debt. These concerns are not unfounded. A bevy of surveys and studies paint a grim picture for students and recent graduates. The findings of the 2012 AIA/NCARB Internship and career survey is a collection of shocking numbers.13 51% of architectural interns and recently licensed architects had been laid off from a position in the 9. Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (London: Verso, 2014). 10. Waite, Richard, and Ella Braidwood. “Mental Health Problems Exposed by AJ Student Survey 2016.” Architects Journal, July 28, 2016, https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/mental-health-problems-exposedby-aj-student-survey-2016/10009173.article. Reliable literature on the mental health of architecture students in the US similar to the above is hard to come by and much needed. However, the context of architecture education in the UK is sufficiently similar enough to the US to point to a deep problem. 11. Dan Howarth. “Architecture Ranks Fifth in List of Jobs Most Linked to Suicide,” Dezeen, November 16, 2016, https://www.dezeen.com/2016/07/06/architecture-ranks-fifth-jobs-most-likely-suicide-centers-disease-control-prevention-usa/. 12. “Studio Culture Reviewed,” American Institute of Architecture Students, 2015, http://www.aias.org/ wp-content/uploads/2017/03/AIAS_Studio-Culture-Reviewed_Survey-Results_2015.pdf. 13. The Rickinson Group, “Summary of Findings: 2012 AIA/NCARB Internship and Career Survey,” The American Institute of Architects and the National Council of Architecture Registration Boards, https:// www.brikbase.org/sites/default/files/aiab098444.pdf.
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The view from the other side of the hiring table further reveals a huge schism in our understanding of how skills figure into the workplace. It is no wonder students are clamoring for “real world skills,” given that the AIA chief economist, Kermit Baker, recently observed that “A 2015 AIA survey of firms looking to fill architectural positions found that more than half reported that finding candidates with either the required technical skills or project management skills was a major problem.”15 The most telling and thorough study was conducted by NCARB in 2012.16 The “NCARB Practice Analysis of Architecture” surveyed the perception of architects, interns, and educators about their the level and point of acquisition of 104 tasks and 122 knowledges/skills routine to architectural work. The key findings presented a knot of mismatched expectations. Educators only identified 9 of the 104 tasks in the survey as not included in their program, while interns and recently licensed architect identified 35. Further, an individual comparison of responses between educators and architects revealed differences about the level to which students are expected to be able to understand, apply, or evaluate knowledge at the completion of an accredited architecture program, with an overwhelming majority of practitioners responding that the majority of the 122 knowledges and skills surveyed should be acquired before graduation. The survey also indicated that the current generation of young architects is acquiring more of the necessary skills and knowledges for architectural work during their education than in the past. The question of if and what kinds of coursework this displaces in their curricula remains open. School administrators and educa-
14. This particular survey was conducted in the wake of the Great Recession and there are indications that things have improved marginally since. However, the memory of economic crises and the knowledge that everything can go so wrong so quickly remains a motive force. Further, multiple studies and reports have shown that the gains of recovery have had uneven distribution. Although there has been a recovery, if the majority has felt its effects at all it has only been in a limited fashion. 15. Kermit Baker. “How Many Architects Does Our Economy Need?” Architect Magazine. January 05, 2018, http://www.architectmagazine.com/aia-architect/aiafeature/how-many-architects-does-our-economy-need_o. 16. “2012 NCARB Practice Analysis of Architecture,” NCARB, 2013, https://www.ncarb.org/sites/default/ files/2013PA_BoxSet_AllReports.pdf.
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architecture’s traditionally sleepless and brutal studio culture has found new life. Whatever the origin of this studio culture, its continued presence has less to do with cultural inheritance and and more to do with the fact that conditions of society at present compel its continued existence, albeit with unrecognized changes to the underlying motives. Sleeplessness in the name of constant productive or consumptive activity is part and parcel of the neoliberal economy, not a unique feature of architecture school.9 NAAB policies designed to curtail the most extreme excesses of this negative culture have had limited impact because students themselves have internalized the need to constantly groom their skills-set and credentials in order to become employable.
past year, and 57% of interns indicated having sought additional training or exams to make themselves more marketable in the more competitive job market. The survey further noted that that the percentage of interns indicating that their compensation, professional satisfaction, and hours worked were all worse than expected had increased. 60% of interns indicate their career outlook to be worse than expected related to compensation.14
The results are predictably disastrous. A survey of 450 architecture students in the UK conducted by The Architect’s Journal (AJ) showed that “over a quarter of students surveyed (26 per cent) said they were receiving or had received medical help for mental health problems resulting from their course, while a further quarter of respondents (26 per cent) feared they would have to seek professional help in the future.”10 In the United States, a Center for Disease Control study ranked architecture fifth among over 450 occupations most linked to suicide.11 A survey conducted by the AIAS indicates that architecture students in the United States spend an average of 23 nights per semester working past 2:00 am, spending 31.8 hours per week on average on studio coursework alone, and averaging a measly 5.7 hours of sleep a night.12 As the commentary in the AJ study shows, the underlying cause of this mental anguish is overwork coupled with, and perhaps caused by, anxiety about finances, job prospects, and student debt. These concerns are not unfounded. A bevy of surveys and studies paint a grim picture for students and recent graduates. The findings of the 2012 AIA/NCARB Internship and career survey is a collection of shocking numbers.13 51% of architectural interns and recently licensed architects had been laid off from a position in the 9. Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (London: Verso, 2014). 10. Waite, Richard, and Ella Braidwood. “Mental Health Problems Exposed by AJ Student Survey 2016.” Architects Journal, July 28, 2016, https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/mental-health-problems-exposedby-aj-student-survey-2016/10009173.article. Reliable literature on the mental health of architecture students in the US similar to the above is hard to come by and much needed. However, the context of architecture education in the UK is sufficiently similar enough to the US to point to a deep problem. 11. Dan Howarth. “Architecture Ranks Fifth in List of Jobs Most Linked to Suicide,” Dezeen, November 16, 2016, https://www.dezeen.com/2016/07/06/architecture-ranks-fifth-jobs-most-likely-suicide-centers-disease-control-prevention-usa/. 12. “Studio Culture Reviewed,” American Institute of Architecture Students, 2015, http://www.aias.org/ wp-content/uploads/2017/03/AIAS_Studio-Culture-Reviewed_Survey-Results_2015.pdf. 13. The Rickinson Group, “Summary of Findings: 2012 AIA/NCARB Internship and Career Survey,” The American Institute of Architects and the National Council of Architecture Registration Boards, https:// www.brikbase.org/sites/default/files/aiab098444.pdf.
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The view from the other side of the hiring table further reveals a huge schism in our understanding of how skills figure into the workplace. It is no wonder students are clamoring for “real world skills,” given that the AIA chief economist, Kermit Baker, recently observed that “A 2015 AIA survey of firms looking to fill architectural positions found that more than half reported that finding candidates with either the required technical skills or project management skills was a major problem.”15 The most telling and thorough study was conducted by NCARB in 2012.16 The “NCARB Practice Analysis of Architecture” surveyed the perception of architects, interns, and educators about their the level and point of acquisition of 104 tasks and 122 knowledges/skills routine to architectural work. The key findings presented a knot of mismatched expectations. Educators only identified 9 of the 104 tasks in the survey as not included in their program, while interns and recently licensed architect identified 35. Further, an individual comparison of responses between educators and architects revealed differences about the level to which students are expected to be able to understand, apply, or evaluate knowledge at the completion of an accredited architecture program, with an overwhelming majority of practitioners responding that the majority of the 122 knowledges and skills surveyed should be acquired before graduation. The survey also indicated that the current generation of young architects is acquiring more of the necessary skills and knowledges for architectural work during their education than in the past. The question of if and what kinds of coursework this displaces in their curricula remains open. School administrators and educa-
14. This particular survey was conducted in the wake of the Great Recession and there are indications that things have improved marginally since. However, the memory of economic crises and the knowledge that everything can go so wrong so quickly remains a motive force. Further, multiple studies and reports have shown that the gains of recovery have had uneven distribution. Although there has been a recovery, if the majority has felt its effects at all it has only been in a limited fashion. 15. Kermit Baker. “How Many Architects Does Our Economy Need?” Architect Magazine. January 05, 2018, http://www.architectmagazine.com/aia-architect/aiafeature/how-many-architects-does-our-economy-need_o. 16. “2012 NCARB Practice Analysis of Architecture,” NCARB, 2013, https://www.ncarb.org/sites/default/ files/2013PA_BoxSet_AllReports.pdf.
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tors that do not reorient curricula strongly towards closing the skill gap between the students and the profession are in a difficult position. A survey of incoming first-year students indicated that finding a good job was one of the chief motivators of college selection.17 The top criteria for selection was the academic reputation of a given school. On the face, this seems positive for those who see the role of the academy as training citizens and expanding knowledge, but students’ seeking out reputable schools could be another manifestation of the search for employability, a phenomenon that sociologists term “credentialism.” In other words, students go to university with the expectation that it will bolster their prospects in life and opportunities to get a well-paying job. It’s not an unreasonable expectation, but it risks overshadowing the other functions of education, namely nurturing well-rounded, passionate, and worldly citizens.
very obstacle standing in the way of achieving that goal. This point is also lost on the more progressive wings of the architecture establishment, who see design thinking and architecture as a solution for solving social ills. At the most recent AIA convention, architects with socially minded practices like Francis Kéré, Michael Murphy, and Alejandro Aravena were lauded non-stop for demonstrating how architecture can fix the world’s grave problems.19 It is not the case that something has gone horribly wrong in the world for there to be so much inequity, oppression, and misery—that is, in fact, the natural result of capitalism working just fine. When faced with structural problems like these, the solution must go far beyond buildings and include intense political action.
Employability as a concept informs, structures, and names the problem, but readers will have noted the title of this piece. Although it seems clear to me that we need to name this force behind our professional anxieties so as to understand them, we must ultimately oppose the ideologies and structures that create the employability paradigm in the first place. The idea that one must constantly take personal responsibility for developing workplace skills seems natural in our current neoliberal context, but it is in fact a relatively recent phenomenon with roots in third-way politics and policies. It is the culmination of anti-worker politics that have ramped up inequity by enabling a nearly unfettered transfer of wealth upward—the result of an Overton window that has shifted so far to the right over the last four decades that the mainstream left-wing parties across the globe have abandoned traditional demands to ensure a basic quality of life through providing services in favor of programs that provide job and skill training.18 In other words, the politics of personal responsibility are the byproduct of the neoliberal belief that the government’s prime role should be to ensure the smooth functioning of the market. Within this context, the right-wing position is to allow the market to sort the worthy from the unworthy and the center-left position is to make sure the market has a steady supply of able workers. Both positions lack a recognition that the market is not just inadequate to serve the needs of the many, but often the 17. Eagan, Kevin et. al, “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2016,” Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, https://www.heri.ucla.edu/monographs/TheAmericanFreshman2016.pdf. 18. Premilla Nadasen. “How a Democrat Killed Welfare.” Jacobin, February 09, 2016, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/02/welfare-reform-bill-hillary-clinton-tanf-poverty-dlc/.
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Politics is fundamentally about decisions about how goods are produced, circulated, and consumed and who reaps the benefits from that process. Those with power are in pole position to dictate those decisions to those without. The ideological function of employability is to justify the moral hazard of shifting the investment of capital in skilling workers away from the employers—or, beyond them, capitalists—and onto the workers themselves. In architecture, this condition is exacerbated by low profit margins that drive firms to push the responsibility of skilling onto the universities and ultimately students and recent graduates themselves.20 The question is not whether architects should develop skills, but rather who takes responsibility for the investment that entails. For example, tuition costs skyrocketed in the past few decades as corporations and governments are no longer willing to subsidize higher education now that degrees are in abundance and for all the anger, there is little political pushback. Further, when investments in developing skills are placed onto the workforce, they exacerbate existing oppressions and all but ensure that only those who can afford the investments of cultivating their employability actually become employable enough to get a job or a promotion.21
19. Keefer Dunn, “AIA Convention 2017: Message Over Substance?” Architects Newspaper, May 23, 2017, https://archpaper.com/2017/05/aia-convention-2017-message-substance/ 20. Phil Bernstein, “Commodity Exchange / Outcome Delivery” (presentation, “Rebuilding Architecture” Symposium, Yale University, New Haven, CT, January 25-27, 2018). During his presentation, Bernstein showed that industry wide profit margins were around 13% and indicated that this small figure was a key factor hampering long term investments in research and innovation at firms. 21. “EQxD Metrics: Paying Dues,” Equity by Design, December 01, 2017, https://themissing32percent. squarespace.com/blog/2017/12/1/92g3nrh0llzo3s4z6efdl9xhi0kd68.
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tors that do not reorient curricula strongly towards closing the skill gap between the students and the profession are in a difficult position. A survey of incoming first-year students indicated that finding a good job was one of the chief motivators of college selection.17 The top criteria for selection was the academic reputation of a given school. On the face, this seems positive for those who see the role of the academy as training citizens and expanding knowledge, but students’ seeking out reputable schools could be another manifestation of the search for employability, a phenomenon that sociologists term “credentialism.” In other words, students go to university with the expectation that it will bolster their prospects in life and opportunities to get a well-paying job. It’s not an unreasonable expectation, but it risks overshadowing the other functions of education, namely nurturing well-rounded, passionate, and worldly citizens.
very obstacle standing in the way of achieving that goal. This point is also lost on the more progressive wings of the architecture establishment, who see design thinking and architecture as a solution for solving social ills. At the most recent AIA convention, architects with socially minded practices like Francis Kéré, Michael Murphy, and Alejandro Aravena were lauded non-stop for demonstrating how architecture can fix the world’s grave problems.19 It is not the case that something has gone horribly wrong in the world for there to be so much inequity, oppression, and misery—that is, in fact, the natural result of capitalism working just fine. When faced with structural problems like these, the solution must go far beyond buildings and include intense political action.
Employability as a concept informs, structures, and names the problem, but readers will have noted the title of this piece. Although it seems clear to me that we need to name this force behind our professional anxieties so as to understand them, we must ultimately oppose the ideologies and structures that create the employability paradigm in the first place. The idea that one must constantly take personal responsibility for developing workplace skills seems natural in our current neoliberal context, but it is in fact a relatively recent phenomenon with roots in third-way politics and policies. It is the culmination of anti-worker politics that have ramped up inequity by enabling a nearly unfettered transfer of wealth upward—the result of an Overton window that has shifted so far to the right over the last four decades that the mainstream left-wing parties across the globe have abandoned traditional demands to ensure a basic quality of life through providing services in favor of programs that provide job and skill training.18 In other words, the politics of personal responsibility are the byproduct of the neoliberal belief that the government’s prime role should be to ensure the smooth functioning of the market. Within this context, the right-wing position is to allow the market to sort the worthy from the unworthy and the center-left position is to make sure the market has a steady supply of able workers. Both positions lack a recognition that the market is not just inadequate to serve the needs of the many, but often the 17. Eagan, Kevin et. al, “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2016,” Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, https://www.heri.ucla.edu/monographs/TheAmericanFreshman2016.pdf. 18. Premilla Nadasen. “How a Democrat Killed Welfare.” Jacobin, February 09, 2016, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/02/welfare-reform-bill-hillary-clinton-tanf-poverty-dlc/.
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Politics is fundamentally about decisions about how goods are produced, circulated, and consumed and who reaps the benefits from that process. Those with power are in pole position to dictate those decisions to those without. The ideological function of employability is to justify the moral hazard of shifting the investment of capital in skilling workers away from the employers—or, beyond them, capitalists—and onto the workers themselves. In architecture, this condition is exacerbated by low profit margins that drive firms to push the responsibility of skilling onto the universities and ultimately students and recent graduates themselves.20 The question is not whether architects should develop skills, but rather who takes responsibility for the investment that entails. For example, tuition costs skyrocketed in the past few decades as corporations and governments are no longer willing to subsidize higher education now that degrees are in abundance and for all the anger, there is little political pushback. Further, when investments in developing skills are placed onto the workforce, they exacerbate existing oppressions and all but ensure that only those who can afford the investments of cultivating their employability actually become employable enough to get a job or a promotion.21
19. Keefer Dunn, “AIA Convention 2017: Message Over Substance?” Architects Newspaper, May 23, 2017, https://archpaper.com/2017/05/aia-convention-2017-message-substance/ 20. Phil Bernstein, “Commodity Exchange / Outcome Delivery” (presentation, “Rebuilding Architecture” Symposium, Yale University, New Haven, CT, January 25-27, 2018). During his presentation, Bernstein showed that industry wide profit margins were around 13% and indicated that this small figure was a key factor hampering long term investments in research and innovation at firms. 21. “EQxD Metrics: Paying Dues,” Equity by Design, December 01, 2017, https://themissing32percent. squarespace.com/blog/2017/12/1/92g3nrh0llzo3s4z6efdl9xhi0kd68.
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KEEFER DUNN
In the face of concerns about employability, we should not simply submit to the demands of the market, aka “the real world.” We cannot as a discipline lose the widespread desire to work toward the social good. Rather, we must effectively create the conditions that enable us to actually carry out that work beyond the scale of the local.22 We should continue to insist that our value and expertise is in creating meaningful, beautiful spaces that serve the public good, and not solely in our ability to carry out technical tasks and produce and stamp drawings. Architects are increasingly marginalized in the building process in part because even the bare-bones commitment to the public good implied by licensure goes counter to the developer logics that promote inequity, gentrification, and rampant financial speculation. The fight against the force of conformity to the status-quo, employability, is inextricably linked to the fights for dignity and equality more broadly. Winning that fight requires a multifaceted strategy embodied by new organizations like The Architecture Lobby which is equal parts a research collective, activist formation, proto-union, and mutual-aid society. It means cooperativizing small offices that do socially minded work so they can broaden their reach and effectiveness. It means organizing unions in large offices to change the power equation by placing an upward pressure on wages that can combat a race to the bottom in fees that is rapidly foreclosing our professions capacity for conscience. It means revisiting our assumptions about the technical as a site of political action given that this is the single most significant intersection of buildings with the forces of political economy. It means going beyond platitudes and overstatements about the capacity of buildings to serve people to advocating for changes in policy and law. It means using the relative autonomy of the university as a laboratory for critical approaches to professional practice and rejecting curricula aimed at acritically preparing students for a job. Above all else, we should not feel embarrassed about wanting a world where we can live without precarity and work on projects that benefit everyone. That is the real world we can win if we organize.
22. Cheryl Weber, “Social Justice Propels Today’s Young Design Professionals.” Residential Architect, April 08, 2013, http://www.residentialarchitect.com/practice/social-justice-propels-todays-young-design-professionals_o.
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Refusing Work Ashton Hamm, James Heard, Chealsea Kilburn, and Matthew Ridgeway (UXO)
The end of the fabrication process has come when the thing is finished, and this process need not be repeated. The impulse toward repetition comes from the craftsman’s need to earn his means of subsistence, that is, from the element of labor inherent in this work… In either case, the process is repeated for reasons outside itself, unlike the compulsory repetition inherent in laboring, where one must eat in order to labor and must labor in order to eat.—Hannah Arendt1 Developing the structures of a practice—the constitution of its staff and its relationships within the discipline—is necessary architectural work. Practice is the primary site to promote the value of the architect. Being non-critical of practice perpetuates inequalities within the discipline. In order to effect change, practice must be developed deliberately, always aimed at promoting the value of the architect. This work—developing the structures of a practice—is only possible as a mode of labor. In practice, each project proposal instantiates new conditions for relationships within the discipline. Each client relationship offers new ground to convey the value of architecture.
1. Arendt, Hannah. “Labor, Work, Action.” The Phenomenology Reader (London: Routledge, 2002), 368.
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