General or specialized training: Is US planning education fit for the future?

Planning education has been in place in its current form for some time — is it time for something new? Much of the pedagogy that was emerging in the early twentieth century and maturing in the post-war period is still in place today. One major approach, first articulated clearly by Harvey Perloff in the 1950s, was that planning education would produce generalists with a specialty. This idea moved beyond the field's earlier design focus to propose that planning education should provide both a broad, common body of knowledge, skills, values and specific expertise. Given the rapid pace of change in the world — environmental, political, technological, demographic — should planners instead lean into their generalist ability to bring people together to collaborate on important problems, or dig deeper into specialties? This question matters for students selecting programs as well as professionals concerned with the future of the field. I propose that aiming to create generalists with a specialty is still a useful way to organize education for beginning planners, but for others, more tailored strategies may be more relevant.

A strong start for beginners

In the U.S., the generalist-with-a-specialty philosophy was, for many years, encoded in the Planning Accreditation Board's curriculum criteria, which specified general knowledge for all planners and then provided a format for specialties. While many programs did not formalize their concentrations and areas of emphasis as the PAB outlined, most programs offered paths for students to engage more deeply with topics ranging from transportation planning and urban design to healthy places and community development. While the PAB has relaxed its specialization criteria, most programs still offer some form of concentration to signal their expertise to applicants and help students identify relevant courses once they are enrolled. The two-year minimum length of accredited planning programs has space for both general and specialized education.

As I have outlined on Planetizen before, the generalist-with-a-specialty approach has several benefits, particularly for those new to planning. A generalist training, one that not only addresses planning but also its relation to nearby fields and civil society, is good preparation for future collaboration and interdisciplinary leadership. We often hear calls to break down administrative silos, and generalist training provides a strong base for such work. For universities and students, the generalist-with-a-specialty approach helps structure a program that provides a broad understanding of planning in the first semesters, with later specializations or concentrations building on that foundation. Many students enter planning wanting to address a specific problem, such as sustainability, but in the first year, they change their minds about exactly how to go about solving it. For example, they might shift from a proposed concentration in environmental planning to one in transportation. By delaying the specialty training to the second year, students have flexibility to alter their path. If the planning program only offered specialized training, it would not be as easy to make that kind of shift. Employers also benefit by having a predictable general knowledge base among new graduates.

Limitations for certain demographics 

However, the model has some limitations. 

One limitation is that there is not enough time in two years to become both a generalist and a true specialist, a challenge made all the more acute by the pace of change in the contemporary world. Even two years is a lot of time to spend on training in one's twenties, and there are significant opportunity costs. Rather than extending the degree, other options have emerged. Dual or joint degree programs, which involve study beyond two years, are evidence of that demand. Other students pursue one-year master's degrees or additional certificates while they are in school or after they have worked for a while.

Another weakness is that the generalist-with-a-specialty approach focuses on beginning planners, and with declining numbers of younger students, planning might need to attract students further along in their careers. For someone who is already a specialist in a related field, such as environmental engineering or landscape architecture, what they may really want is generalist knowledge of planning so they can collaborate better with others. Meanwhile, someone who has been a planner for a while might need specialized training to achieve real mastery in a subfield. Both of these mid-career student types would receive generalist-with-a-specialty training in a typical PAB-accredited program, but they would actually need only part of the training package.

A final limitation for the generalist-with-a-specialty model is format. While it can be delivered in a variety of modes, the dominant path has been full-time or part-time over a relatively short period, and this may not fit contemporary career paths or learning expectations. 

The future of planning education demands variety

What do the limitations of the generalist-with-a-specialty model mean for the overall philosophy of planning education, producing generalists with a specialty, and for students selecting planning programs? The generalist-with-a-specialty idea is still relevant: It is a tried-and-true approach to training beginning planners. But with changing demographics and new challenges, planning education needs to be better tailored to meet more students where they are.

There are plenty of examples the U.S. can look to for more flexible planning school programs. In the UK, the Royal Town Planning Institute has been experimenting with an apprenticeship model. Australia has long had a great deal of distance education, though not necessarily in planning. The Claremont Lincoln University, founded by the same people who run the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, offers an online certificate in planning for $5,000 that can build toward an unaccredited 13-month online master's degree. There are other options for planning education, from microcredentials to executive master's programs, and formats ranging from online to intensive. They deserve more investigation from U.S. educators.

To best position planning education for the future, educators need to provide planning education in more varied formats in terms of length of program and focus. Doing so will help meet the needs of today’s planning students, and help ensure a more robust, well-rounded workforce of planners tomorrow.