ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION STRATEGIC PHD PROGRAM DOCUMENT

The first PhD program in architecture in Iran was initiated in the early nineties. The rapid expansion of such programs in recent years has resulted in a critical situation in the country, where several public and private universities and academic institutions take PhD candidates, and have already graduated a large number of PhD holders.Unfortunately, though, the products of PhD courses, either the graduates or the dissertations, have not lead to the expected developments, while the unbalanced expansion of such programs is turning out to become a big problem.The present report is to draw the attention of architectural education planners, managers, professors and thinkers to the most important aspects of PhD courses in architecture as well as their advantages and drawbacks. By doing so, it intends to find proper approaches towards the improvement of such courses to meet the real needs of the discipline as well as the profession of architecture, so crucial to the enhancement of the built environment.This text is organized in five chapters on the following issues: current problems in architectural PhD courses, the nature, the product, the types and context of PhD research, and the research moda operandi.