A capital funding squeeze led universities to seek new ways of developing their campuses. It now appears city CBDs and developers might do better out of those deals than universities.
More than 90% of universities in the world have been built since 1949. The vast majority built large campuses outside city centres, and all for much the same reasons.
Academics are often in the vanguard of the fight to preserve heritage buildings but they are losing the battle on home turf as universities shed their 1960s and 1970s concrete skins.
When universities began expanding, they became more inclusive. While this is a good thing, scholars often look at their large class sizes and lament that half of the students won’t set foot in the lecture theatres or libraries thanks to technology.