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India faces huge shortage of architects

There is a huge shortage of architects in India at present. Only 50,000 registered architects are there as against the demand of 500,000. Large amount of construction work of commercial spaces is going at present but there are not enough architects.  

Although there are 170 architectural colleges all over the country but the students taking admission are quite less. Each year the number of pass outs in this field is around 3000 as compared to China which is around 1, 20,000 per year, only because of limited number of students in architectural colleges. The ratio of architects to total population stands at a low level of 5,450 to 10 million.

The experts are of opinion that this can be due to the fact that these engineers feel that they are not paid enough in this field as compared to IT and other engineers. The beginners are able to earn around only Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 per month. So they find themselves to be underpaid i.e. only 3% to 4% of the estimated cost. For a five-year bachelor’s degree in Architecture, the course fee starts from Rs 15,000 per annum in government colleges and in private colleges, it varies from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 10 lakh as initial payment.

Moreover they want jobs right after passing out from the college. But this field requires a great practice before one can properly establish oneself. Some of the experts believe that people do not take it as a full fledged profession but take it up as a parallel profession. Another key factor in the lack of interest lays in the fact that architecture as subject is not introduced at the school level.

There is shortage of faculty members in the colleges too. Each college needs 15 more teachers. The quantity and quality of the training facilities is not up to the mark. Students are much aware of the profession due the fact that architectural activities are mostly concentrated around big cities and metros.

So due to all these factors the industry is facing acute shortage of well qualified architectures. And to overcome the problem the profession under discussion needs a multi-pronged approach. If we want to catch up with rest of the world we need to produce more architects. The experts say that things have started improving at present as there has been 10-fold increase in the student intake in the last 10 years. But looking the present requirement if the qualified professionals the intake needs to be increase around 30-40 students in each school. 

 
Source: Sify News