Recent documents give a sense of how the National Education Policy (NEP) will play out in professional education. Architecture, in particular, is set for radical shifts. Many architects hold the firm view that professional education should be left to professionals. They argue that practitioners can steer professional education better, as they now do through the Council of Architecture (CoA).
The concerns appear valid, and the demand that NEP limit itself to the humanities, science, and at the most include engineering seems persuasive. However, architects seem to overlook the historical reasons that bring them under NEP and the inadequacy of their current education model. An uninspiring approach, poor training, low employability of graduates and a choking regulatory framework undermine the discipline. NEP is the best chance to set the house right.
Undergraduate education trains students to practice. Hence, law and medicine have their independent bodies looking after education. However, historically, architecture was clubbed with engineering as ‘technical education’ and brought under the Education Ministry. It came under the purview of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), set up in 1945. By the time the AICTE got its statutory footing in 1987, the Architects Act was enacted in 1972, and education came under the purview of an independent CoA. However, this did not shift it to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, which would have been more professionally aligned as law and medicine are with their respective nodal ministries. It is now moot to ask if architects can reset history. The question to ask is: how can NEP bring progressive practices to architectural education?
