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ALBION DISTRICT LIBRARY BY PERKINS + WILL IS A 2018 COTE TOP TEN RECIPIENT. IMAGE: DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY

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The Committee on the Environment (COTE®) is an AIA Knowledge Community working for architects, allied professionals, and the public to achieve climate action and climate justice through design. We believe that design excellence is the foundation of a healthy, sustainable, and equitable future. Our work promotes design strategies that empower all AIA members to realize the best social and environmental outcomes with the clients and the communities they serve.

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Is the College Building Boom another Bubble?

  • 1.  Is the College Building Boom another Bubble?

    Posted 08-17-2015 11:21 AM
    This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Committee on the Environment and Regional and Urban Design Committee .
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    The Unsustainable Building Boom at Colleges and Universities 

    Higher education should all be about tomorrow, yet the colleges and universities build as if there is no tomorrow. Just when the popularity of online universities makes many university presidents wonder about the future of their brick and mortar campus and economists warn of the ever large debt accumulated by graduates due to skyrocketing tuition fees, adding ever more fanciful brick and mortar buildings adds significantly to the expenses of higher education institutions.
    A probably largely speculative graph of facility space in higher ed
    from the New England Journal of Higher Education

    The last round of decadence before disaster strikes, or a sound investment in a healthy future? The potential for a debacle hasn't gone unnoticed and has become the topic of national media:

    A multibillion-dollar building boom is under way at U.S. universities and colleges-despite budget shortfalls and endowment decline.

    Some $11 billion in new facilities have sprung up on American campuses in each of the last two years-more than double what was spent on buildings a decade ago, according to the market-research firm McGraw-Hill Construction-even as schools are under pressure to contain costs. (Washington Monthly)
    The building boom sometimes just comes as part of ambitious masterplans, part of the agenda of presidents that worry about their legacy, or created under the guise of keeping up with the Joneses. Sometimes the Joneses live in Finland or China, where students are so much better in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) - as if the buildings are mostly responsible for successful education in those fields. K-12 schools call for the 21st century learning methods based on the four Cs: critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity. 
    CSU Campus masterplan, blue buildings are new
    Higher ed can't get left behind with 20th century buildings. Sometimes, as we can readily demonstrate in Baltimore, the desire to compete with up to date buildings instead of highly-qualified faculty or cutting edge curricula and research takes on bizarre distortions between demand and supply. But lowly state universities are by no means the only culprits. MIT allowed themselves an original Gehry and afterwards sued the architect because the masterpiece Stata Center allegedly didn't function to the specifications.
    Colleges and universities across the country have been building new facilities to keep up with expanding STEM -
    Read complete article

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    Klaus Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
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