When I read news about architecture becoming the #1 most-coveted faculty at my alma mater, I wondered about what factors could have made it happen. This was despite architectural studies being presented in bad light for a political campaign last year, which illustrated how today’s university graduates have difficulty finding employment. The sentiment was denied (unsatisfactorily, according to me and my peers) by the chairman of the Indonesian Institute of Architects. Perhaps, this is merely testament to how “all press is good press”. [I want to hear your view if you are a student interested in architecture — drop a comment below or reach me elsewhere.]
But it is well-known that the majority of architecture school graduates in Indonesia don’t end up becoming architects. The head of the architecture department at the University of Indonesia stated that only 50-60% of their graduates go on to practice in their field. He did not cite architecture-specific tracer studies, so I would even hazard to say that 60% is an exaggerated percentage. For regions outside of Java-Bali, some schools even state that around 40% of their graduates are not absorbed into the job market at all. Several factors were mentioned to contribute to this problem, including the legal trickeries of the construction system which often hurts architects, as well as the difficulty of completing architectural studies itself.