Last week, the AIA’s Center for Emerging Professionals launched the "Know Your Worth" platform at the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) Licensing Advisors Summit in San Diego. The ongoing educational campaign consists of two videos, "Value Your Work" and "Value Our Future," which were created in response to the current debate surrounding the issue of unpaid internships, as well as larger concerns about the profession, including firm culture.
"Every year, the Center for Emerging Professionals and the AIA get questions about whether students should be taking internships that aren’t paid," Center for Emerging Professionals manager Jonathan Tolbert, Assoc. AIA, told ARCHITECT in an email. "It is a problem that is slowly dissipating, but not quickly enough." The AIA does not currently have a way to gather data on how many professionals receive payment during architectural internships.
The first part of the campaign focuses on unpaid internships through video, but its larger aim is "to encourage emerging professionals to value their work and the profession, as a whole," Tolbert says. "It will speak to firm culture, the outward appearance of the profession, and many other high-level issues we face in the architecture and design industry."
Part two, a free salary calculator to be released later this month, aims to help young professionals obtain information on average and expected salaries based on job experience, location, and firm size. The data will be derived from the bi-annual AIA Compensation Survey.
The campaign’s website includes a survey that asks emerging professionals to identify issues they face within the profession, and the AIA plans to use that information to develop additional online resources.
