The TRUTH about an ARCHITECTURE degree...

Is an architecture major or architecture degree worth it

That's what we're going to be talking about today. But before we jump into that, make sure to gently tap the like button in order to defeat

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miss out. So first of all, what the heck is architecture? Architecture is the science and art of designing and engineering large structures and buildings

So an architecture degree is a really cool combination of kind of hard skills

You know, you're going to have to have some math skills, but you also have to have some artistic talent as well

Around 8,500 people graduate with an architecture bachelor degree every year. And there's something magical and amazing about imagining a structure in your head

putting it down on paper, and then eventually having it become a bachelor degree every year. a reality, building it out in real life. Architecture is something that's going to be interesting

not just to people who end up going into the profession, but to other people, you know, random people

that you meet at dinner, they probably will like to ask you about your profession as well. Now, as always

I'm going to break this down into four different categories that I think are extremely important

when it comes to evaluating college degrees. The first one is going to be salary. Now, graduating with

an architecture degree, you can expect to make around $48,000 a year starting out, and mid-career pay is

going to be 87,000. However, there are other types of architecture, such as interior architecture

and landscape architecture, and the pay is going to be different for those. Now, if you get the degree

and you end up becoming an architect, you can expect to make around $80,000 a year. However, this is

going to vary greatly depending on whether you're working in the public sector, private sector

working for a big firm, or whether you have your own business, you're an independent contractor

It is very competitive, though, and you saw on that last slide with BLS, that it's only growing about

1%, which is much slower than average. Many architecture positions are also going to require

some type of internship. So if you are able to get a job, the salary is pretty good. Overall, I'm

going to go ahead and give this one a 7 out of 10 for salary. Next on the list, we're going to be

talking about satisfaction, and I always like to break this down into two really important categories

which is meaning and then job satisfaction. Now, meaning is basically how much your career, your job

positively impacts the rest of the world. Whereas job satisfaction is just how much do you enjoy doing your job

So let's say you were employed to just watch Netflix all day long and you were a Netflix critic

You might really enjoy doing your job. It's something that you would really enjoy doing because, hey

who doesn't want to watch some Netflix? However, you might find, especially a few years in, that your job

doesn't have very much meaning. Whereas let's say you're a plumber and you're kind of just doing the same

things over and over again you know you fixing pipes It might not be the most glamorous job but you are helping people because people truly do need plumbers So that career might have a high meaning score but it might not have as high of a job satisfaction score

Now, according to Pay Scale, with an architecture degree, you're going to have around a 55% meaning score

And by that, I mean 55% of people think that their degree and the job that that led to significantly positively impacts the world

When it comes to meaning, that is going to be a little bit above average when you compare

to other types of degrees. Now, when you look at job satisfaction

there are several different types of architects that you can become, but let's say you decide to become a landscape architect

About 73% of landscape architects said that they were extremely satisfied with their job

That is also going to be higher than average. And you can probably imagine why

Becoming an architect is pretty awesome. You get to use those hard skills that not very many people have

and then you also get to use your own artistic ability to create buildings that maybe no one's ever even seen before

People generally tend to think architects are cool. If you mention that you're an architect around a dinner table

a bunch of people are going to start asking you questions. And so if you are able to get a job as an architect after getting an architecture degree

then you're probably going to be pretty satisfied with it. So for that reason, I'm going to say the satisfaction score

if you are able to get a job, is going to be around 8 out of 10

So it's going to be pretty high. However, that's a big if, and I'm going to talk about that in the next section, which is demand

So remember when I talked about becoming an art, architect and how it's only growing at about 1% per year. That means there's only going to be around

1,100 jobs that open up in the next 10 years. I also mentioned there's around 8,500 people who

graduate with an architecture degree every year. So there's a little bit of a number of discrepancy there

There's not that many jobs opening up and there's a lot of people graduating. Now, of course

there's also going to be a lot of people retiring, so hopefully that frees up some of the jobs

but it's still obvious to see that this is not one of those industries where there's just tons of jobs left and right. So it will likely be very difficult for you to get your first job

right out of school. And so it's going to be extremely important for you to network and make sure

you do internships. And on top of that, an architecture degree isn't going to be as flexible as, say

a business degree, for instance. So with a business degree, let's say you planned on being a

marketer, for instance, so you got a marketing degree. And then you decided, hey, I don't really

want to be a marketer. It would be very easy for you to switch careers and go into something else

Business degrees are extremely flexible and they have a lot of options. options for you just because of the fact that every company out there, every industry out there is

hiring people who graduate with business degrees. An architecture degree on the other hand is not going to be

nearly as flexible. So the skill set that you learn with an architecture degree is going to be

extremely valuable. However, it is pretty specific and specialized and it might be a little bit

difficult for companies to see how you're going to use that skill set in other roles. However, with that

being said I do think there one saving grace when it comes to getting an architecture degree and that is that it highly respected So there are certain degrees out there like engineering for instance where even if you don become an engineer it still very easy for you to get a job in other areas So for instance

you might get an engineering degree, and then you end up becoming a software developer. A lot of

companies out there have the philosophy that they're just going to hire the smartest possible

people, and then they can train them how to do the job later on. Architecture also falls under

this category where a lot of companies out there are looking for people who graduate with

architecture degrees. For instance, if you search the keyword monster.com for architecture degree

there's about 43,000 listings that have that as a keyword. Now, as a comparison, computer science

degree is a very popular one. Lots of people are looking for people who graduate with computer science

degrees, and that has 141,000 job listings. And an anthropology degree, on the other hand, is going to have

around 829 job listings because that's not generally a degree that a lot of people are looking for

So with that being said, the demand here is going to be lower than average, but, it's still not the worst. Overall, I'm going to give the demand a six out of 10

Next on the list, we're going to be talking about X factors. And X factors could be anything

from flexibility to how easily automated is the career. We also talk a lot about the skills

that you learn in the career and how valuable those skills are on the market. So ZipRecruiter has

a skill index that basically says how valuable different types of skills are. And according to this

index, service-oriented architecture has a skill index score of about 59. An Rectrocutor

Architecture design has a skill index score of about 39. This is kind of average, maybe slightly below average

And this doesn't necessarily mean that these skills aren't valuable. It's just how much are they valued on the market

How much are different businesses willing to pay people who have these skills

With that being said, according to a study by the tab.com, architecture did actually rank as the most difficult degree that you can get

And that probably explains why it's so well respected. Business owners know that if you can get an architecture degree

which is definitely one of the harder degrees, it might not be the hardest, but it's definitely

one of the hardest degrees, then you can probably do a really good job for them. But this also

means that it's going to be one of the most difficult degrees, so you might want to keep that

in mind just because of the fact that the average 18-year-old might not be ready for the curriculum

I remember when I went to college, if architecture is anything like engineering, those guys were

studying like 24-7, whereas the business majors were having a lot of fun, the engineering students

were basically studying all the time. According to Will Robots Take My Job.com, there's about

a 1.8% chance that architecture will be automated. And I tend to agree with that. There's no way

architecture is going to be automated. That combination of artistic skill and then also the hard skills

when it comes to math and designing stuff and all that. There's just no way that you're ever going to

be able to automate that. It would also be very difficult for you to outsource it and send it to

another country just because of the fact that you do have to have a lot of communication with other people that are going to be working on the project But overall I think the issue with this one and it really suffers is because of the fact that it just not very flexible Most people are going to go to architecture school and get an architecture degree because they want to be

architects. The problem is there's just not that many jobs out there for architects. And this isn't

one of these degrees that's extremely flexible where you can just easily switch careers. Yes

sure, absolutely. It's possible for you to switch careers and do something else, but it's not

going to be as easy as, say, a business degree. It's also one of those careers that depends

heavily on how the economy is doing. So if the economy is going really well, they're probably

going to be designing and building a bunch of new buildings. And if it's not going very well

they're probably going to be scrapping all of those projects. Overall, if you plan it out

if you've really done your due diligence when it comes to planning, making sure you know exactly

what you're going for, and then figuring out reverse engineering the steps that you need

to take in order to get there, then this can be really good. But I'm going to have to say here

that if you make a mistake, this one has an X factor score of 5.5 out of 10. So when it

comes to the pros and cons of studying architecture, some of the pros are going to be that it's

somewhat artistic. Now there's different programs, some of them are going to offer a BA, which is more

of an artistic related degree, and then some of them are going to offer a BS, which is more of a science

related degree. But overall, it is going to be somewhat artistic no matter which one you go for. And

people who become architects tend to really enjoy their job, so that's another pro here. And on top of that

architecture degrees and architects in general are going to be pretty well respected. Some of the

cons here are going to be that it's going to have low job growth and the growth is going to depend

quite a bit on how good the economy is. The second thing here is the process of becoming an architect

can be extremely competitive, long, and expensive. Some people end up going back to grad school

in order to get a master's degree or a doctorate. There's a lot of tests and certifications that you have

to get. Many people end up doing internships as well before they get hired for a full-time job. And then

another con is that it's one of the most difficult majors, although this could be seen as a positive as well

all I'm going to give this one a score of 6.625 out of 10. It can be a great degree if you've really

planned things out and you know exactly what you're getting yourself into. However, if you don't

plan things out or things don't go exactly the way that you thought they were going to, this one

can be a big trap. Now, of course, this is going to be completely subjective. You know

getting a degree for one person might be a 10 out of 10 score and then getting this degree for

another person might be 1 out of 10. I always encourage you guys to do your own research when

it comes to these videos. And a great way to do research is to check out my college degree

ranker down below. It's a list that I put together in my Patreon and I'm updating it periodically

My goal is to make the most complete and accurate list that exists anywhere in the world

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