The Paradox of New Buildings on Campus - Jon Marcus, the Atlantic

States are collectively spending 17 percent less on public higher education, when adjusted for inflation, than they did before the downturn, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports. This comes at exactly the time when a huge proportion of campus buildings have reached the point when they need major repairs and renovation. Forty percent were constructed—many of them not particularly well—during an enrollment spike between 1960 and 1975, according to the Sightlines survey. Still, in spite of their financial woes, universities and colleges spent $11.5 billion last year on construction, an all-time high, according to Dodge Data & Analytics, a private company that tracks this. Some of that was for renovations, but it also paid for 21 million square feet of more new space. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/the-paradox-of-new-buildings-on-campus/492398/