An analysis of skill priorities in the education system of undergraduate architecture programs (a comparative study in eight world’s high-ranking universities)

Architectural education upon emergence like other fields of education, has frequently have undergone significant evolution, and in this course, the attitudes of decision-makers in this area of the study due to its affects on the development of educational environments and systems has had an important role. In various educational systems, there always were ambiguities about the require time to cover the educational courses, the fundamental to choose presented lessons, and the kind of skills which are taught. In this study, the main objective was to propose an optimum model and a coherent strategy based on analyzing the specifications of various educational systems in the world while providing the profit undergraduates studying in the field of architecture with an efficient as well as purposeful education; therefore, using the correlation method in dependent and compound manner, and based on a casual and systematic approach to architecture education, the educational program was considered as a system that can be analyzed and evaluated through the general theory of systems. Ultimately, analyzing the priority of the skills revealed that “flexibility” as the most specific quality of architecture syllabus had been recognized in the world which can itself be divided into two parts: “flexibility in selecting the courses from the presented ones” and “flexibility concerning the subject of designing in the architecture design courses”. Besides the methods of evaluating and selecting the courses depend on tendencies of undergraduates, but this is neglected in the systems of architecture education in Iran.