i am an architecture student and a computer scientist (a floor wax and a dessert topping, baby) -- and i have seen a lot of the degraded drawing skills discussed in the article. the real problem, i think, isn't that architecture students nowadays don't know which end of the pencil to stick in the scary-twirling-blade-with-a-handle thingy -- it's that drawing is a way of "feeling" your way through to understanding of the physical world, and it's that intuitive knowledge that they lack.

an extreme illustration -- if you sit on your computer making ass-kicking spacescapes all night long, you may not understand that a two-hundred foot cantilever is, on our little planet, in many cases, physically unwise. oh, you might know it, intellectually -- but you might not really *feel* it in your bones -- the way you would if you spent years on the floor with legos, and another few years drawing nature and building with an actual pencil, in your actual hand -- getting the feel of the world and of architecture in your hands and your body. technology will, of course, catch up with that lack, as well -- but it hasn't yet, and you can tell, often, by looking at the stuff the non-drawers produce...