Demands for courses change by semester.  Facilities change by decade.  As higher education moves further into digital transformation, the costs of this lag time are rising.  The trajectory of campus plans must change.

There is always a misfit or lag time between facilities needs and the ability to respond.  When the GI Bill swelled enrollments, colleges responded with larger classes and temporary buildings.  When the demographic wave of the baby boom hit higher education, the response was more large classes and more campuses.  All of this worked pretty well.  The pace of rising demand could be estimated about 18 years in advance and increased funding generally allowed for institutions to gauge their facility responses appropriately.

The digital transformation now underway will require different capabilities, not more facilities.  As a significant fraction, perhaps more than one-third, of course content moves into the digital domain the building blocks of facilities demand are becoming less certain.  Both traditional and non-traditional academic programs can respond to this dynamic with increased reliance on adjunct faculty.  For good or ill, this is a work force that can be modulated with relative flexibility.

Facility responses are not so flexible.  The cycle, from defining a need to moving in, can be easily a decade.  Sometimes a year can be shaved off the design and construction process.  Sometimes funding is more quickly arranged.  Still the process usually results in delivering a building to a different cast of faculty than those that began the process.  This is not a problem when pedagogical change is glacial, but that is not where we are.

The good news is most large institutions already have more floor area than they will need in 2022.  The bad news is the excess area is scattered throughout the campus and “owned” by a wide range of programs.  This scattered ownership makes it difficult to improve efficiencies within any program, much less at an institutional level.  The One University framework at Ohio State is an excellent example of addressing this issue.  By recognizing the need for the institution to have a shared target for facilities capacity, it is theoretically possible to define building needs more strategically.

If the ground is shifting as quickly and significantly, as I believe it is, all institutions should re-evaluate their existing facilities plans.  Most institutional plans for future facilities are little more than a politically correct prioritization of departmental wish lists.  Only by defining strategic institutional facilities goals that can be achieved in a decade, is it possible to plot a better trajectory.  Business as usual will lead only to more space, not better space.

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