According to Wikipedia,
“A degree is a college or university diploma… which is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavor deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree. The most common degrees awarded today are Associate, Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral degrees.
The most basic degree, called a Bachelor’s degree, consists of a course of study of 3 to 4 years. To call oneself “architecturally trained,” one must have a 4 year degree at an accredited University and then also pursue an additional specialized course of study over an additional 2 years, towards a professional terminus degree usually known as a Master’s of Architecture. Or, alternately, one must do the 5 year Bachelor’s in Architecture that some colleges offer. At the minimum, an architecturally-trained designer will have spent 5 years of 50+ hour weeks studying their field. That is 12,500 hours of design study. To become eligible to be tested to become a licensed architect, another 5+ years of internship are required, often at 50+ hours a week for 50 weeks a year. That is another 12,500 hours of training. So the minimum for a new designer fresh out of school is 12,500 hours of experience, and the average for a well-trained architectural designer ready to take the exams and with some real experience is 25,000 experience hours. 

Why, one might ask, is this relevant? The Earthship website states that there is no time limit for interns in obtaining their degree, which they get from attending the Earthship Academy, a $2,500 on-site building education program that requires a minimum of a month-long commitment.
The major issue here is that one cannot get a “degree” in 4 weeks. Even if super-students work extra diligently in such a program and stay on for say… 3 months… those graduates are coming out with MAYBE 600 hours of experience. 

WHAT SOUNDS LIKE A BETTER INVESTMENT IN YOUR HOME DESIGN?
HIRING A DESIGNER WITH 25,000 HOURS OF EXPERIENCE OR 200 HOURS?

The internship would be more accurately called a “workshop” or “certification.” This issue is compounded by people who have completed the Earthship training and are calling themselves “degreed” in Biotecture - something that sounds a lot like Architecture. Except they are missing critical knowledge about the core components of good design: basic structures and systems, site orientation, landscape, thermal action, etcetera... Not that a degree is required to do good building, but call it a degree implies that the graduates have special knowledge, training, and/or experience - when they only have a workshop's worth. Would you let a person with one workshop worth of accounting manage your IRS audit? Probably not. So why would you let someone with one workshop’s worth of Earthship training design your house?

I do not say this lightly. I am an architecturally-trained designer and researcher with 16 years (around 40,000 hours) of experience. I am not trying to protect that tiny piece of the pie that licensed architects are keen to keep me from feeding off of - the 2% of all buildings that licensed architects design. But I am fully trained, and was certified in 2006 to take the Architects Registration Exam. I believe that you should expect from a “degreed” designer more than a Biotecture graduate can possibly get in that speck of time. Architecturally-trained designers know how to protect your health, safety, and welfare; we understand climatic impacts on design; and we know when to call in a licensed architect and/or an engineer. Working with someone who knows about design is like medicine: you want the best trained designer you can find, just like you want the best doctor you can find. 

We believe that the better solution for those who are looking to get a solid foundation in Earthships and other natural building techniques is to check out the UNM-Taos Green Technology Program, which offers University-level courses in CAD, Tiny Houses, Southwest Landscapes, Solar Design, Building Science, Wiring and Plumbing, Sustainable Systems, Solar Thermal and PV… in addition to the Earthship Design class taught by Earthship Biotecture’s own renowned expert Phil Basehart. The diversity of the UNM-Taos program will help you to be ready for many of the questions you may need to answer if you want to design yourself an Earthship-inspired home that diverges from traditional models. 
There are specialized classes on natural building that would be a great asset on this journey as well. Some of them could easily be paired with a visit to Taos to check out the Greater World site or attend the workshop or visit UNM-Taos. We will talk about several of them in more depth in later chapters, but you might want to look into studying Earth Plaster with Carole Crews, or Cob and Strawbale Building with Sigi Koko, Adobe Making with Cornerstones Partnership, or Cordwood with Richard Flatau. Our friend Oliver Swann’s Natural Homes website is the largest online natural building resource in the WORLD, and he has a list of workshops that might be a bit
closer to you. For those in or wanting to attend an accredited Architecture program, I would recommend the
sustainable design class at CU-Boulder where they come out to Lama Foundation north of Taos and design new modern style sustainable tiny-house inspired buildings. The buildings they design are extraordinary, and paired with Lama’s training in permaculture, this opportunity offers an exceptional alternative for those who would love to see natural done in modern, design-oriented, ways.


The Myth of Getting it Built by People who are Willing to Pay
Asking people to pay for the opportunity to work on your home is one common way of attempting to raise money and feed and house volunteers.  If you are really organized, then pay for the traditional Earthship training, and then pay for the insurance and food for the volunteers to come to your home and help build, this might be feasible for you. Do not get discouraged if volunteers are hard to find at the start, or if people want to help but cannot pay. Many people who have enough disposable income to pay will often go to Earthship Biotecture to get a certification. After some time, and some publicity of your project, hopefully more volunteers will come help. We will get more into planning for volunteers in the section Planning a Build: Managing Volunteers.