Remember when NBC labeled almost every degree in creative subjects useless? No? Let me enlighten you.
In the years following the global economic recession of 2008, unemployment rates were higher across the board, but those majoring in the following five fields were hit the hardest: fine arts; drama and theater arts; film, video and photographic arts; commercial art and graphic design; and — last but not least — architecture.
NBC’s “useless” ratings appeared to have been based on a feature published by The Daily Beast back in 2012, which ranked majors based on their statistics for the following five criteria:
- Unemployment levels for recent graduates
- Unemployment levels for experienced graduates
- Earnings for recent graduates
- Earnings for experienced graduates
- Project growth in total number of jobs, 2010 to 2020
According to their statistics, architecture majors ranked number five overall, but were the worst off when it came to employment, with a 13.9-percent unemployment rate for recent graduates and a 9.2-percent unemployment rate for experienced graduates.
When the above screenshot was posted on The Angry Architect’s social media page, it was intended to spark a debate about the perceived value — or lack of it — of creative disciplines in the eyes of the wider public. In fact, what played out was a proverbial Facebook firestorm: Over 1,000 comments flooded in, and the post was shared over 9,000 times. Most of the comments were angry: This was something that people felt passionately about, and they came out in force to defend their industries and professions in an extraordinary way.
Of course, the reason for people’s discontentment was not related to the difficulty in acquiring and keeping a job in these fields. I understand this more than most: I was let go by two successive firms in 2009 on the back of financial woes for each company. Following the global recession, unemployment rates were indeed high and it was a struggle for many architects. What people really took issue with, though, was NBC’s readiness to equate this struggle with “uselessness.”
The media company, in its desire to attract the maximum number of viewers with a provocative headline, implied that majors in creative disciplines like these had become valueless in the face of wider economic strife. This graphic effectively warned prospective students against taking these majors on, asserting that they should plumb for a more financially sound option. To many, this assertion missed the point of creative degrees in a fundamental way, and the reaction was understandably fierce.
The most-liked comment — an instinctive retort by follower Patrick Taguibao — captured the general sentiment, receiving Facebook’s famous thumbs up 1,353 times. “I’m in neither one of these majors,” said Taguibao, “but my say is that every human being [that] has a talent: Without these majors, where would they be now? No movies, no good-looking houses, no great buildings, no literature, no modern communication, no TV … no ‘creative’ people born because there is no entity to legitimize it … Care to disagree? Oh wait, you can’t.”
Taguibao rightly pointed out the applicable skills that go into the creation of almost everything that surrounds us, from architecture to graphic design, media and art. There is a certain irony in NBC calling majors in film, video, photographic arts, commercial art and graphic design all useless when its own media platform is undoubtedly brought to life by people with degrees in those very subjects.
ViaMichael Hanson/The New York Times
Huffington Post contributor Allison Caw — a performing artist, writer and educator — put it even more eloquently in a recent article. “I am going to go ahead and make an assumption about NBC’s (and our cultural) definition of ‘useful,’” she wrote. “It’s based on capitalist dogma. It’s based on the money-making machine, consumption and production. It’s based on social constructs that we created, and rests solely on paradigms that don’t exist beyond our own willingness to believe in them. Our economic and cultural structures seem so concrete that it’s easy to forget that we imagined them into being, that without us, they do not exist.”
Returning to that infamous screenshot, it is worth pointing out that NBC’s shortlist belies a substantially more positive statistic noted in the Daily Beast’s original post — the potential for growth in the profession. Back in 2012, the total number of jobs in the profession was predicted to rise around 24 percent over the following decade, giving architecture graduates much better future prospects than those in every other major in this list.
This prediction is backed up by the Department of Professional Employees, which states thatbetween 2008 and 2010, over 300,000 architecture and engineering jobs were lost. However, those same occupations added 335,000 jobs between 2010 and 2015, growing employment by 12.8 percent and recovering that deficit in a relatively short amount of time.
Via the Department of Professional Employees
While the past few years have been tough on many young architects, Architizer CEO Marc Kushner summed it up when he said of the construction industry, “We are the first to get hit in a recession and the first to recover. The industry is highly susceptible to macroeconomic trends; however, construction never stops — even in a downturn.” To ensure that construction is of a quality that will provide people with optimal places to live and work, innovative and creative professionals are needed — and architecture majors are best placed to fill those roles.
Most importantly, though, it is vital to remember that studying creative subjects is not simply about finding a job in a specific vocational field. Studying architecture trains you to think critically, innovate, communicate and work as part of a team to find a solution, whatever the challenge might be. In a global recession, those skills are more crucial than ever. In fact, they might be the very assets that end up saving a young professional’s proverbial skin, as they afford a plethora of career opportunities pertaining to the built environment and beyond.
Still want to call architecture majors “useless,” NBC? Think again.
