Guest Blogger:
Sal Rinella
Over the past several months, I have often driven past a higher-education center that is under construction. I’ve seen bulldozers moving dirt, foundations being poured, and new structures springing out of the ground. On the Web, I see that the master plan calls for all of the usual facilities: general and specialized classroom buildings; a student union; athletic and recreation fields; and lots of parking — the whole works.
I’ve spent over 35 years working in higher education, and there was a time when I would have seen this construction as an exciting development. But now, in a new century with all of its new developments, I have a different reaction — “Why?”
Why is it smart to invest so much in bricks and mortar when online and blended education are growing so rapidly? Why should a new campus be in a fixed location when there is increasing emphasis on community engagement? Why do we continue to build campuses on a model that creates a massive carbon footprint for construction and long-term maintenance when higher education seeks to play a leadership role in sustainability? Why can’t we take a page from the for-profit sector and create new campuses that leverage our natural advantages — price, quality, and reputation?
Sector envy is at least partly to blame — every two-year technical college wants to be a community college; every community college wants to be a four-year institution; and every four-year institution wants to be Harvard. By and large, campus planners and architects have responded by working off a fixed template: the open yard or quad, the iconic building, parking on the perimeter.
It’s time that planners move into the new century when starting a new educational center, doing a campus master plan, or designing a new building. Let me offer two planning principles that should become guidelines:
Stop considering classroom instruction as the rule and distance education as the exception; instead, think of them as equals in the delivery of instruction. Distance and blended education are the fastest growing delivery models. They are ideal for non-traditional students attempting to fit in their education around home and work responsibilities, as well as for tech-savvy traditional students who live more and more of their lives inside the parallel online universe. In a very real sense, their ways of communicating, socializing, and playing are now blended between in-person and online. It is natural to them that their educational lives should follow suit. And research and experimentation supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts have long ago put to rest the notion that online instruction is inferior.
When doing a campus master plan or planning a new facility, give equal consideration to locations in the community and locations on campus, particularly facilities for professional programs. Among the advantages: Doing so places selected academic programs in the community that the institution seeks to serve; enhances the institution’s role in community development; and provides creative financing opportunities through third-party financing and redevelopment funds. This is consistent with our for-profit competitors, which locate their facilities in convenient locations for students. There are also many excellent examples in the non-profit sector, including those at Georgia Tech, the University of Michigan at Dearborn, Western Washington University, and the Savannah College of Art and Design, which has developed its entire campus in two million renovated square feet in 60 locations in the city’s historic district. —Sal Rinella
Sal Rinella, February’s Buildings & Grounds guest blogger, is president of the Society for College and University Planning. He is also a consultant with the strategic-planning firm Stratus and is former president of Austin Peay State University. You can read his previous posts here and here.
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