In the mid-20th century, a Military Industrial Complex developed to maintain the expansion of American military capability. At the same time, a Campus Planning & Building Complex developed to expand American higher education. Both worked well to produce more, and each benefited from an aura of self-fulfilling prophecy.
For American higher education, expansion was a successful strategy. Many states developed university systems and sprouted comprehensive campuses where only small private colleges had existed before. Student capacity and research expenditures grew more than 10 times. Major public institutions grew from flagships to aircraft carriers. Building area increased by more than 20 times. Governors and legislators got used to being photographed in front of buildings, not graduating classes. The Association of Physical Plant Administrators and Society for College and University Planning helped to professionalize the staff positions required to build and maintain the Campus Planning & Building Complex.
Such a system is ill suited for the demographic changes, fiscal limitations and technological innovation now underway. What worked so well for more than fifty years of facilities expansion has left most state systems and their institutions in an unsustainable position – more space than they need and more than they can afford to operate and maintain. Many private institutions with rising discount rates are depleting their reserves.
Edifice Complex – New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller was said to suffer from an “edifice complex,” but he was not alone. The membership of the Campus Planning & Building Complex grew to include legislators seeking local support, presidents and provosts seeking support from boards, deans and department chairs, and all of the internal and external planning and building professionals striving to maintain the trajectory of growth and expansion.
Standard planning methods were developed to quantify the need for more space. The principal method has been “peer benchmarking” – comparisons to the facilities wealth of aspirational peers. Planning consultants are asked to assess facilities needs and justify them by comparing the size and quality of facilities of those institutions that are more highly rated. The ‘peer benchmarking’ approach to assess facilities can only produce a rationale for more and more space. No institution aspires to be average, much less below average.
All the members of the Campus Planning & Building Complex are invested in maintaining the system and justifying the need for more facilities. As a result most capital facilities programs are little more than politically correct prioritizations of departmental and college wish lists. They have only a tangential relationship to fiscal and technological reality, and too often perpetuate obsolete instructional patterns.
Breakpoint – Few dare to doubt the value and continued existence of the traditional campus, but some are beginning to ask questions about the paradigm of physical growth. On the surface these questions involve seeking consultants willing to recommend reductions and adaptation rather than expansion. More fundamentally these questions challenge assumptions and practices that have guided campus planning since the mid-20th century.
Asking these questions is just a first step in the realignment required as campuses face the reality of changes in three patterns: demographic, fiscal and technological. The evidence of realignment is beginning to appear. The turmoil surrounding Sweet Briar and the University of Maine are not anomalies.
Consolidation of institutions is underway in the University of System of Georgia. Institutions including the University of Arizona are seeking planning consultants that understand the need to “…optimize the utilization of existing facilities and minimize new facility requirements.” The State University of New York system has acknowledged structural financial deficits that could deplete its reserves in a few years. Elsewhere, discussions of mergers and absorptions are common. These are just four published examples. These kinds of big and small signs – cracks in the façade – are appearing in all but a few states among institutions public and private.
The Challenge for SCUP and Campus Planners – We are at the trailing edge of six decades of campus facilities expansion. The resulting mix of assets can be a rich foundation on which to rebuild and right-size sustainable institutions, or part of an unsustainable burden that helps to sink the rest.
As long as campus planning methods remain in the traditional frame of continued expansion, the fiscal and environmental burden to institutions will rise. Realignment and adaptation – changing the trajectory – will require different ways of thinking about and justifying facilities. Instead of boasting more area per student, instead of following obsolete patterns, institutions will need to focus on effectiveness. A step in the right direction will be to boast a smaller carbon footprint per credit hour or more effective learning environments.
This is time of existential challenge for many institutions and a challenge of conscience and creativity for the professional and institutional members of the Society for College and University Planning. They and their predecessors have been dramatically successful for 50 years in growing the physical presence of American higher education. The challenges of institutional realignment, consolidation, adaptation and right-sizing in response to demographic, fiscal and technological change will prove to be more difficult.
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