Architecture in the UK has been labelled the “most socially exclusive profession” ahead of law, medicine and accountancy, according to research by the Cabinet Office, and Australia may be headed in the same direction.

The extortionate cost of qualifying in the UK coupled with rock-bottom starting salaries has led to claims that the profession excludes people from diverse social backgrounds.

Documents released by the Cabinet Office’s panel for Fair Access to the Professions show that it costs more than $122,000 (£60,000) to qualify in the UK. If that’s not off-putting enough, the starting salary is just $40,500 (£20,000).

President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Sunand Prasad, said student debt is a “huge barrier”. “This is about social class, not gender or ethnic minority … The barrier is the lower status of part-time courses — there’s a certain snobbery,” he told Building Design.

But, in Australia, a historic strong trend for part-time education that has previously helped create a “broad”, “not particularly elitist” profession has changed for the worse, a leading Sydney architect has said.

Philip Thalis, director of Hill Thalis who has been lecturing at universities for 25 years, told Architecture & Design that pathways to part-time education were drying up.

“There used to be a part-time course [at UTS] where people could work four days a week,” he said. “Everyone doing that course was doing it because they couldn’t afford to do full-time study. It had quite a high percentage of mature students, particularly drafts people, who were admitted into Year 2. That was really quite a working class course. Now that’s been overturned in the last three or four years.”

During the boom years, many students were able to work part time in architectural practices, Thalis said. However, as the recession bites those placements are looking less likely.

Architect Paul Berkemeier said that the problem is being compounded by a lack of government assistance. In the medical profession, interns are subsidised by the state but in architecture the industry has to bear the cost of internship, he said.

“When commonwealth and state governments had very large architecture departments of their own they deliberately had students on cadetship and they became a training ground for a generation of architects. But they have disappeared as funding has been cut back.”

Gemma Battenbough

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