Provosts and presidents are asking how much campus they actually need.  Campus planners are caught between decisions of building or not building.  As each contemplates changes to the trajectory of their institution, they will be well served to have the courage to consider both a blank slate and “Old Main.”  Making campus matter in the 21^st century requires two contradictory ideas:  respecting legacy and starting fresh.  Until recently much was tacitly assumed to be fundamental to the idea of campus:

• Physical class time was required.
• Serendipitous encounters occurred face to face.
• The value of an institution was tied to a specific geography.
• Books were on paper.
• An undergraduate degree required eight semesters.
• Research required specialized locations; and
• Interactions among students and faculty were synchronous.

These assumptions are becoming either obsolete or optional.  The choices vary among institutions and are a function of evolving business models.Even for those choosing to retain a traditional residential model, the digital transformation of higher education is changing the methods and means of teaching, learning, scholarship, research, communications and unmooring all from conventional notions of place.  In such a fluid milieu, of what use are conventional notions of campus planning, design and facilities management?  Aren’t the practices of real estate investment and disinvestment more appropriate?

Iconography and Identity  The identity of traditional institutions is tied to recognizable icons such as the neoclassical dome of Building 10 at MIT or the porches of Old Main at Arizona.  Without such markers, every institution might well be as placeless as the University of Phoenix, which uses the term “campus” to refer to rental spaces.  This strategy allows Phoenix to right size facilities with the practical methods of real estate investment and disinvestment.

Traditional institutions don’t view the campus as real estate.  Yet, as academic business models morph into being less place-dependent, the importance of making prudent facilities investment choices will become more clear, but no less difficult.   Overcoming resistance based on nostalgia can be relatively easy compared to changing traditional turf protection and operating practices.  Along with altering decades of institutional inertia, such changes will be painful.

Considering a Blank Slate.  Sustaining the 21^st century campus requires more than preserving physical legacy. Our ability to imagine and plan this evolving campus is obscured by our knowledge of the present just as it is constrained by legacy.  In this context it makes sense to consider a blank slate while still respecting an institution’s place-centric identity.

Higher education institutions, constrained by legacy, have been slow to respond to changing business conditions for years.  During the last twenty years, US businesses have essentially halved their office space per staff member.  They have modified their staffing models with flatter hierarchies and open officing.  For the most part, higher education still operates within the business models common in the 1970’s and 80’s.

Institutions are so limited by engrained physical and organizational patterns. Considering them to be blank slates is a radical — and prudent — way to respond to the ongoing process of digital transformation.

The constraints of legacy extend to campus planning.  Many facilities planning efforts start with two assumptions:  1) the campus lacks sufficient space and 2) many of its existing facilities are deficient.  A standard method of quantifying and simultaneously validating the original assumptions is to “benchmark” to an institution with more resources and prestige, leading to a constant process of ratcheting up of justification in a never-ending cycle of keeping up with the Joneses.

The benchmarking methodology assumes that facilities of peer institutions are more adequate and more appropriate, but it is likely that both assumptions are wrong.  The peer institution’s facilities are a result of decisions that were set in motion in the last century, well before the ubiquity of digital content and mobile devices.  In a previous post I argued that as long as facilities planning methods are stuck in a traditional frame of continued expansion, the fiscal and environmental burden to the institution will rise.

Changing an institution’s trajectory requires a different way of thinking about facilities.  Instead of boasting more area per student, institutions need to focus on effectiveness, considering the campus with its icons and legacy as a blank slate.  Only in this way is it possible to define minimum functional requirements rather than planning an unattainable idealized maximum.

What Now?  Keeping the best of the existing campus (the richest iconography and most cost effective) will be easy choices.  Disinvesting in the obsolete and replacing with only what is required will be more difficult.  Until recently constant expansion — while maintaining a wide range of obsolete and underutilized buildings — was standard practice with limited consequences.  In the early 21^st century few institutions can continue to tolerate such luxury.

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