Change of all sorts (for instance in financing and contract management, in technology and in proportion of work that is now fit-out or refurbishment rather than new-build) has been dramatically transforming much of the building industry and its procedures. Yet these and the corresponding changes being faced by and within the architectural profession are quite unrecognized by almost all architectural schools, no matter where. But, not only have curricula not been revised and extended accordingly, most schools now fail even to impart adequately such traditionally crucial skills as an understanding of construction. And in design studio, the heart of any course, the confusion that changes within and outside the building industry have provoked in the architectural profession is further exacerbated because these changes are not being taken up as a challenge to be faced and mastered. Instead they are ignored as being compromising, even distasteful, in an idealistic flight into indulgent irrelevancy. In Britain, and in most other countries too, architectural education is based upon an increasingly irrelevant role model, that of the architect as an elite professional independent of and superior to the building industry and each architect, if not actually a principal in his own firm, at least a job runner and designer aspiring to genius. But the architect is being reduced to simply another member of the building team, and so of the industry by factors like the increasing complexity of the building industry and the resulting proliferation of all sorts of new skills and consultants, as well as new constructing systems in which the architect is often only one of a team selecting from subcontractor designed elements.