Growth or Decline? A Longitudinal Analysis of Factors Affecting the Institutional Trajectories of Five Design Disciplines in the United States*

Apart from a handful of studies that utilize longitudinal data, our knowledge is very limited regarding how large-scale disciplinary change occurs. This knowledge gap is even more glaring for design disciplines, despite their increasing significance. This article longitudinally analyzes the extra- and intra-institutional factors that affect the growth of undergraduate education in five major design disciplines in the United States between 1988 and 2012. These five disciplines are architecture, landscape architecture, urban/city/community and regional planning, industrial design, and interior design. To do so, it combines data from the US Integrated Postsecondary Education Data Survey (IPEDS) with state-level data from the US Census and US Department of Labor Statistics. Results from a series of analyses using lagged random effects models show that despite unique disciplinary histories, individual factors such as interdependencies between different fields, the size of institutions, and the increasing campus presence of women play a common role in the growth of five design disciplines in the United States.