A Small Thought on Architectural Education
The last article in this column presented a detailed description of portfolio agency operations to lay the groundwork for a discussion on the architectural discourse and pedagogy of US universities. In this issue, we are going to discuss more on how the university education system has bred the portfolio business, and what reflections we can take away from these agencies. Let’s start by looking into how the portfolio business started, or why this market exists.
The information shared in this piece is based off my personal observations/discussions during my time as an architecture student and is meant to be read as a personal opinion piece.
The Nature of the Portfolio Business
The essence of all the portfolio agency businesses can be boiled down to profiting from asymmetric information, which here is the information about what kind of students schools prefer for admission. In the cases of portfolio agencies, they are selling information about what kind of a portfolio can get students into grad schools. Because the admission rubric necessarily reflects architecture school’s value judgments, stated another way, what portfolio agencies sell are the unspoken rules within the architecture bubble.
There are three parties in this market: the buyer (student who wants to apply to western architecture schools), the seller (portfolio agencies), and the actual service provider (grad students or graduates from the top architecture schools, who are employed as portfolio instructors in these agencies, half time or full time.)
We’ve talked about portfolio agencies in the last article. They are complicated businesses. They sell education, or more realistically, the formula for making good-looking portfolios. Because a portfolio is the reflection of one's design ability and a crucial component for admission, the story of portfolio agencies becomes complicated.
Thus, it might be easier for us to look at portfolio agencies if we view the design education part and the admissions counseling services they offer separately. Following this thread of thinking, we can say that the quality of a portfolio agency depends on whether that agency is more of a design education company or more of an admissions counseling company.
Those portfolio agencies which are more admissions-oriented see the business opportunity in the gap of information. They are not necessarily run by people who study design, but they consolidate resources just like a client-matching platform: they connect students and instructors, and gain a huge profit from taking a cut from the transaction. Other portfolio agencies, those that focus more on design education, might be started by people who're actually interested in architectural education. Some of them have had a hard time getting a place in the competitive academic world but are still interested in teaching. Recent architecture graduates who have aspirations for having their own architectural practice may start teaching portfolios as a means to support their small office. Most of the time, the division line is not as clear, since even the most design-oriented portfolio agencies still need to profit from the promise of getting students into architecture schools, which makes it hard for us to say something like “this agency is fine because they are teaching design” or “this agency is not acceptable because people there are only aiming to be admitted”. As stated in the last article, this business can only be described in a gradient of greys.
Memes from the internet make fun of the high cost of architecture schools and job market students face after graduation
Image from: https://successfularchistudent.com/15-architecture-student-memes/
Behind the increasing number of grad tutors is the expanding group of students who want to study abroad in hopes of a brighter future. They seem to have the most straightforward reason to be in the portfolio business: they want to get admitted. But just as there’s a gradient of different portfolio agencies, there’re also different groups of students who choose portfolio agencies for different reasons.
Perhaps the most seemingly innocent ones who go to portfolio agencies are the students without architecture backgrounds who would like to switch their majors. They may have an interest in this discipline, but they often times have little to no knowledge about studio culture, design process, or what this field is like in general. Although they may not have studio experience, students are required to submit portfolios to apply to architecture programs. This can make them eager to find someone to get them started and to tell them what makes a good design. There are programs provided by universities for students without previous academic experience in design, like Design Discovery from Harvard GSD, CED Summer [IN]stitutes from UC Berkeley, and New York Paris from Columbia GSAPP. These programs introduce students to architecture, guide them through several small projects to build up their portfolios, and sometimes even provide recommendation letters based on their performance during the workshop. But a lot of times these programs are pricey and hard to reach for students in different geographical locations; and sometimes they too have admission requirements. Therefore, portfolio agencies become an easier substitute.
For other students, who may find it more difficult to work independently and without specific guidance, portfolio agencies are a tool to get them into schools. In some of these cases, the student might expect the portfolio agency to act more as a babysitter-style service that takes care of everything. Sometimes students might not be as interested in improving their technical skills or design ability, but just want to go abroad, get the degree, and graduate（in Chinese this is called “gold-plating”). The portfolio frauds mentioned in the last article seem to happen more frequently with these cases. Even if these types of students use a portfolio agency, it is often still very difficult for them to get into a top school; and even if they are lucky enough to get in, it is likely they are not qualified for the academic rigor.
However, more often than not, many students using portfolio agencies are just normal architecture students studying in foreign universities. When no one they know can tell them what makes a good portfolio, or when their undergraduate program does not prepare them well for applying to western architecture schools, students go to portfolio agencies for guidance. In some cases, they also think their technical skills are limited so they seek training from portfolio agencies for skill-building. And most importantly, students think they will be less competitive applicants if they don't go to a portfolio agency because it seems everyone around them is utilizing this service. In these cases, the portfolio agency acts almost like after-school programs for students. A lot of things most architecture students consider second nature such as using Rhino or adjusting line weights, to them becomes something that needs to be taught; and their schools don't teach them those skills. In this case, a portfolio agency is a way for students to get themselves on the starting line equally; and for this, it’s hard to accuse them of anything.
Portfolio agencies don’t directly teach students how to make good portfolios. They hire grad students to do it. And these grad students working as tutors should not be considered as the primary sellers in this market (as long as they are not the owner of the agencies themselves). Compared to the expensive fees charged by the portfolio agencies, the pay tutors receive for their labor is low. The hourly rate for a portfolio tutor might range from 150 RMB (20 USD) to 400 RMB (60 USD). Although often better than a TA stipend or the average entrance salary for junior architects in the states, being a portfolio tutor is not considered a glamorous job; no one will put it on their resume. Besides, in some ways, the interests of portfolio agencies and grad student tutors are at odds. The more successful the portfolio tutors are at their business (bringing unqualified students into top graduate schools), the more devalued their own diplomas become because less-qualified students are now graduating from top institutions.
So why are there still so many grad students studying in top western architecture schools still willing to be portfolio tutors in these portfolio agencies?
One answer lies in our discipline: the high tuition of architecture schools is at odds with the sluggish job market students face after graduation. If we are in a healthy discipline/industry, why is it that so many students take less traditional paths after graduation, like going to portfolio agencies to tutor a new batch of students? One explanation is because what is taught in school is of little use in producing (capitalist) value in this capitalist society. When a junior designer’s income after graduation cannot cover the expenses of school and life, the graduates naturally find an alternative. For example, ten years ago, when Chinese real estate was still at its peak, the portfolio agency was unheard of. That was a time when Chinese students could get many side jobs even when they were still in school, and many of them naturally started their own firm after graduating. As China's overall economic growth weakened, slowing down urban development, there were fewer and fewer opportunities for new architects to get projects (which has been the situation in the US for a long time). Not surprisingly, that's when some of the first portfolio agencies emerged. Then the whole portfolio business goes into a vicious circle. The worse the architecture industry is, the fiercer the competition among young designers is, and the more people seek a relative advantage by studying abroad in big-name western architecture schools. With the number of Chinese students increasing yearly, the relative advantage of these students studying abroad becomes less. With more and more graduates from western schools returning to China, the already competitive job market only becomes more intense, further stimulating more Chinese students to study abroad. And at the same time, when these graduates coming back from abroad find out they actually don’t have that big of an advantage in the job market as they expected, they may understandably choose to earn their money back by training the next batch of international students.
This is a post on BBS. This kind of portfolio selling/trading is not rare. Although this case is not directly related to portfolio agencies, it reflects the attitude of certain groups of students who choose to use portfolio agencies to do their portfolios.
This is the most common type of student. They know what they want and they know their shortcomings. They hope to find a portfolio tutor to help them improve.
The Role of Architecture Schools
Readers may have noticed that, until now, there has been no mention of the architecture schools in the analysis of the portfolio agency market, which is quite interesting. Although top architecture schools do not exist directly in the portfolio agency market, we all know that they are the main characters.
Schools are an ambiguous presence within this market. Their admissions criteria are a marker of success for agents of portfolio agencies, whether they are more admission-oriented agents or more design education-oriented agents. For the former, admission is a utilitarian indicator; for the latter, the quality of the design is also determined by the recognition of the portfolio by these schools. If the portfolio agency business is about profiting from asymmetric information, then the schools themselves could be the cause of that information asymmetry.
This gap of information encompasses many aspects. Some causes are quite simple to solve, while others are part of a more systemic issue. One of the simplest examples is the vagueness and opacity of the school's criteria for admitting students. Every school writes more or less about the type of students they want or evidence of the design-thinking they are looking for, but these words are often vague and need to be carefully interpreted. Students often don’t know how difficult it is to get into a school, what kind of student that school prefers, the type of student life that exists there, teaching style, and the research direction of each school until they are accepted. One can actually learn a lot if they attend an open house or read the schools’ publications. Of course, portfolio agents simplify this search process much more (especially when the schools have websites that are difficult to navigate).
By simply asking the admitted alums or their grad student tutors from portfolio agencies to share their learning experiences, prospective students can get a lot of useful firsthand information. Through the admission data gathered every year, these agencies can analyze and draw conclusions for what type of student and portfolio is more likely to get admitted. They then tailor the prospective students into that direction, giving students yet another reason to choose an agency. Of course, it wouldn’t take a lot of effort to eliminate this information asymmetry. Schools could implement simple changes such as adding more opportunities to communicate with current students and teachers, which MIT is already doing through applicant mentorship programs, or releasing the portfolios of accepted students in previous years (which is also a good way to prevent portfolio plagiarism). Basically, if schools can be more transparent, they can eliminate the chance that portfolio agencies make a quick buck on this free information.
Other causes of information asymmetry are more profound. They come from the differences between different education systems. Unlike science or engineering which might be more universally applicable, each country seems to have its own discourse for architecture. For example, although each school has a different focus, architectural education in most of the schools in China still largely focuses on designing buildings in a fast, well-functioned, and cost-efficient manner. Many of the projects they use to train students are similar to what students might be doing after they go into practice. These may include residential towers, community food markets, or focusing on researching a specific kind of architecture, like transportation, high-rise buildings, or green building, which is more common for upper year students. This approach is very much in line with China's pragmatic values. Compared to these schools in China, the top architecture schools in the United States are in general quite conceptual and experimental, more similar to art schools in valuing abstract and critical thinking. The “academic architects” here tend to shift towards installation, exhibition, and curation, which typically belong to the art domain. In recent years, the discourse within US schools has become more socially and politically oriented as well.
When international students with undergraduate degrees outside the U.S. apply to graduate school in the U.S., differences in architectural education may sometimes result in disadvantages. Therefore, many Chinese undergraduate students go to portfolio agents: to find graduate students in the top US architecture schools to tutor them on redoing their portfolios, which may mean designing conceptual projects from scratch or changing the presentation of their projects to be more in line with the tastes of US universities. In addition, there’s also a huge difference in habits and customs that provide additional challenges. For example, there is no recommendation letter system in China. When professors are asked to write letters of recommendation, they sometimes just let the students write the letters themselves instead and sign them. I've heard from classmates that some might even give students access to the application system to ask them to fill in the questionnaires themselves. Schools have commonly been known to help raise students’ grades on their transcript if the students request this for studying abroad. This type of long-standing behavior then leads to a distrust of students’ applications from China by western universities; in turn, this also makes it more difficult for students from China to get into US schools compared to students educated within the western education system. The more difficult it is for them to get in, the more likely students are to look to a portfolio agency to increase their chances. If US architecture schools are recruiting international students (many have more than half of the total student body as international students), I think it’s also reasonable for them to consider the backgrounds of where their students come from and to maybe find an alternative or more diverse ways to evaluate applicants, so that these students don’t need to go for a portfolio agency or pretend to be someone else.
Then, why do so many Chinese students still come to the U.S. (and other Western countries) to study when there is such a mismatch in both the education system and habits? It’s because having a western educational background and an understanding of western values and modes of operating is still considered an advantage in China. Mainly because of the strong influence from the western culture, both the general society and the academy in China are measured by the western standard, regardless of its applicability to their own country. For things like art and design, there are no fixed evaluation criteria, but with that mindset (and some help from the college rankings done by the media), US architecture schools seem to be the benchmark. They become the authority that has a say in what’s good or what’s bad. Chinese students, meanwhile, are like OEM sneakers or phones: produced in China, shipped to the U.S., where they get their brands and logos, to increase in their value.
One of the portfolio agencies wrote an analytical article on why Harvard GSD’s admissions from mainland China have fallen to a ten-year low. The schools themselves won’t explain such reasons.
Image from: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/fEQLWTO9VTC3G5_cjz-ilw
What Can We Learn From Portfolio Agencies?
For now, schools are like trees and agents are like vines. The portfolio agencies earn profit from Asian society’s pursuit of western approaches (including their higher education business) and take a piece of the pie. Naturally, whatever the judgment or form of the agency, they learned from western architectural schools.
A robotic fabrication workshop hosted by one of the portfolio agencies.
Image clip from video: http://studioalpha.com.cn/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ADD-vlog.mp4
I was thinking about calling these portfolio agencies mini versions of western architecture schools, but it turns out many of them are larger than some of the US schools. They have their own option studios, and sometimes there are even design-build workshops (you might be able to find more option studios and workshops in a portfolio agency than in MIT every semester). Leaving aside the under-qualified tutors, often times the agency faculty are not very different from American universities. They are graduates (not only Chinese) from prestigious American and European schools who are passing down what they learned and explored in school. Students can also learn a lot if they meet a good teacher. Portfolio agencies also host their own academic lectures and they invite professors from universities all around the world to lead workshops. They also boost camps for improving technical skills or winning competitions and may offer extracurricular activities such as career counseling or company visits. Some portfolio agents have even signed official partnerships with universities such as SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture), UAL(University of the Arts London), or IAAC (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia), helping these schools with recruitments. Although these portfolio agencies are not as authoritative as the elite schools, they seem to be pretty legit. Besides, they appear to be more up-to-date and internationally connected than some architecture schools; the eyes of these portfolio agencies are always looking forward.
The emergence of this so many portfolio agencies seems to have somehow shattered the ”myth“ of architecture schools and their intellectual monopoly. Can these portfolio educations be considered another sense of democratization of education？ And is it possible that now students don't have to necessarily get admitted into these universities to learn (at least part of) the knowledge and discourse?
This is an advertisement on the website of one of the portfolio agencies: “There are more lectures here than at any university". Maybe they're right if you don't consider the quality of the lectures. But the impact of the Internet on architecture education is real: if all the schools could upload recordings of their lectures on the internet, wouldn’t it then be unnecessary for some architects to speak the same content at each school as if they were on a concert tour? Not to mention how this flexibility would increase accessibility for students to listen from all over the world.
Is it possible for us to think of a new kind of portfolio agency that’s beneficial? Maybe it comes in the format of free online workshops, where everyone can have access to the topic of their interest. However, as long as portfolio agencies remain relevant for the purpose of admission, that day may not come. And if they still use admission criteria as their primary criterion for design success, then they won't be as truly innovative as a design training institution. Vines may never become a tree in the end. Perhaps, then, it will be the western architecture schools that could learn to be a little more open-source. The remote learning experience during the COVID period has given us new thoughts on how architecture could be taught. Perhaps similar to how portfolio agencies draw from architecture studios from all around the world instead of choosing from a limited range of options studios within a single school, could students at these institutions instead learn from instructors we are interested in across the globe? Maybe we don't have to take all classes within the same school either, but could freely switch between different institutions? And maybe technical skill-building workshops could be put on a shared platform? (just like what out of frame has already started with open-source). And might this also enable a more open and diverse critic system? Or, perhaps we can reflect on the things we learn in schools. If they are so easy to pick up by anyone through a portfolio agency, then maybe we also need to interrogate the value of what the university offers.
Next Article
The next article (and the last article in this column) will discuss portfolio agencies by inviting different people including:
Students who have been admitted through portfolio agencies,
Students who have not used portfolio agencies,
Portfolio tutors who teach at portfolio agencies,
Owners of portfolio agencies,
And professors in the commission committees of architecture schools.
Let’s wrap up the story of portfolio agencies by listening to what others think about them :)
