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| The Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building, known as ATEC, at the University of Texas at Dallas. The 155,000-sf project was brought in at a construction cost of $47,677,622 and total cost of $60,500,000. In the last few years, the high-tech university, which was founded as a research facility for Texas Instruments, has completed a new visitor center, parking garage, |
The last
decade has been a period of robust construction activity for American colleges
and universities, but many institutions of higher learning are now tapping
lightly on the cap-ex brakes.
To take
the pulse of campus activity, Building Design+Construction spoke with top
capital development executives at five prominent universities: Cornell
University, Gonzaga University, the University of California at Santa Barbara,
the University of Texas at Dallas, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
With one exception, their campus building booms are past their peak, yet all
five still have significant projects under construction and in design.
Post-recession
budget cuts at many institutions of higher learning––largely due to poor
returns on their endowments and falloffs in alumni donations––are having a
negative effect on capital spending, forcing colleges and universities to work
even harder for traditional funding: bonds, donations from foundations and
other non-alumni sources, and public funding.
A less direct
but perhaps even greater threat to campus construction: mounting public
pressure to hold down tuition and student fees. With the average debt of
graduates now topping $30,000, many parents and students are questioning the
wisdom of piling up such a financial burden to earn a degree, especially if
they perceive their precious tuition dollars going toward retiring the debt of
fancy new recreation centers or other “nonessential” buildings.
Read the entire
article at Building
Design & Construction Network
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