A new budgetary proposal by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) has drawn criticism from its collateral organizations: the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS), Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), and the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB).
The dispute is over a funding increase NAAB first requested in 2022, when it asked its collateral organizations to increase funding by 47 percent. All organizations have rejected the funding, feeling that NAAB’s current operating budget (about $1.5 million) was sufficient. NAAB subsequently proposed charging schools directly in order to raise funds; it also proposed ending its longstanding funding relationship with ACSA, but not AIA or NCARB.
Under NAAB’s proposal, the 176 NAAB-accredited programs offered by 140 higher learning institutions in the U.S. and abroad would have to cover about one-third of NAAB’s annual operating budget for accreditation. This means that $538,048 would come from NCARB; $538,048 from AIA; and $0 from ACSA in the 2025 fiscal year. That third batch of capital (totaling $538,048) would directly come from architecture schools. It also means that ACSA and AIAS would no longer be included in a written funding agreement of all five organizations that specifies the amount of funding NAAB receives, and how and when it can be used. Furthermore, NAAB would no longer have to disclose financial information to the funding organizations. NAAB currently hopes to implement its new funding model in January 2025. The proposal in governance and financing has since fueled embittered negotiations.
On August 21, in a Zoom meeting with its members, ACSA noted that accreditation costs would rise by at least 25 percent in 2025 compared with 2023 if NAAB gets its way. And by 2028, costs could be 45 percent higher than in 2023. “Charging schools directly is a change to 20 years of history, so we have major concerns about that,” Cathi Ho Schar, ACSA president, told AN. “Up to this point, ACSA represented schools as their voice in agreeing to an annual MOU [memorandum of understanding] with NAAB. If individual schools are charged directly, they won’t have any real collective agency in determining whether those fees or the process is right.”
“While AIA continues to support accreditation and finds value in the work of the NAAB, we do not support the current proposed pricing model,” AIA president Kimberly Dowdell told AN. “Additionally, we want to be clear that AIA has no oversight in the operational decision-making at the NAAB—which includes pricing—and were not consulted in the development of this pricing model.”
“A Big Gap”
NAAB has more than 20 paid employees and is headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia. In the 2022 fiscal year, according to ProPublica, NAAB had just over $1.4 million in expenses. It saw $741,000 in gross income, giving it $2.7 million in revenue. Members of NAAB’s board of directors are appointed by its collateral organizations, and unpaid volunteers perform the service of visiting architecture schools in all 55 U.S. jurisdictions. NAAB is funded through a memorandum of understanding signed by AIA, the AIAS, NCARB, and ACSA. These collateral organizations each pay NAAB a proportionate amount split three ways.
NAAB president Steve Schreiber said increased funding is warranted because the cost for implementing assessments has risen, and there are now more architecture programs his organization evaluates compared with a few years ago. (From 2019 to 2023, the number of programs grew by 4.4 percent.) Schreiber also defended the funding increase because NAAB is currently operating on a deficit, he said, and because NAAB will soon reduce its accreditation costs for schools by 15 percent, so it needs to make up for that gap somehow. Schreiber outlined NAAB’s agenda in a letter dated July 1 that was sent to educators across the country, sounding alarm bells for many.
ACSA responded to Schreiber’s letter with its own letter, dated July 9, saying that ACSA “strongly opposes” the proposal. AIA, the AIAS, NCARB, and ACSA have since requested that NAAB withdraw its proposal, return to the negotiating table, and discuss a different path forward.
The increased funding proposal has since raised questions about what exactly NAAB needs the extra money for and how it was spending its existing allocations. ACSA executive director Michael Monti said, “We don’t think the number of programs has grown, or at least not by the 47 percent increase NAAB is asking for, so there’s a big gap. Over the years, we’ve made sure to increase NAAB’s funding by the rate of inflation.”
MOU Binding
In March 2023, mediators were hired to facilitate negotiations between the five organizations. That January, before the facilitation process was complete, NAAB released its plans to begin charging schools directly, and end its longstanding funding relationship with ACSA. Later that month, ACSA issued a vote of no confidence against NAAB.
By February, NAAB had issued a call for comment proposal, stirring pushback from educators and its collateral organizations. In March 2024, AIA, the AIAS, and ACSA commissioned an external analysis of NAAB’s operations and finances.
The report’s findings were released in May. It concluded that NAAB “has sufficient assets on hand” to continue its operations through the 2025 calendar year. The report also identified “inconsistent and erroneous financial management and accounting practices that need to be corrected.” The report also stated that NAAB has “unspent collateral investments and therefore NAAB should not collect additional funding from schools at this juncture.” Those findings however are confidential.
“NAAB has refused to have those kinds of discussions with us,” Monti told AN. “NAAB has just consistently said, ‘This is the amount of money we need, and this is the format in which we need it.’”
On July 1, in Schreiber’s letter, NAAB criticized the third-party report: “The funding organizations issued a public statement that speaks to financial, not operational matters, mischaracterizes the findings in the report, and does not acknowledge errors that the NAAB Board of Directors reported directly to the presidents and executives of these organizations.”
ACSA president Cathi Ho Schar organized a special business meeting to discuss the issue on August 21. Representatives from more than 100 schools were in attendance. Monti told AN the session had the “highest turnout ever for an ACSA online meeting.” That day, Ho Schar presented a resolution for how ACSA would like to resolve the conflict.
Under ACSA’s current resolution, NAAB would first withdraw its plan to begin implementing its new funding model in January 2025. Second, NAAB would continue its existing multiparty funding relationship via the binding MOU. Third, NAAB would discuss new funding options to rectify the 4.4 percent growth in programs and inflation. And fourth, NAAB would identify ways to contain costs.
