Higher Ed Has Too Much Wasted Square Footage

Declining enrollment, shifting perceptions of value, regulatory upheaval and technological disruption: Colleges have a lot to reckon with right now. But should they add campus space to the list? Maybe.

According to this year’s Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers, just 43 percent of institutions regularly use more than three-quarters of their physical space. This falls to 19 percent of the public master’s and baccalaureate institutions represented.

At the same time, 44 percent of CBOs said their institutions are maintaining their current physical footprint while investing in renovations, and an additional 31 percent reported targeted expansion. Very few—just 13 percent—reported strategic downsizing.

Against this backdrop—and amid the standing deferred maintenance crisis—nearly three in 10 CBOs (29 percent) flagged facilities as a top area of cost-revenue misalignment at their institution. That’s behind only academic programs (48 percent), athletics (39 percent) and financial aid discounting (30 percent).

Terry Brown, vice president for academic innovation and transformation at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and a former regional public university administrator, said that when it comes to space, “universities are not like hotels and airlines—there’s some inefficiency built in.” Highly specialized laboratories may not see constant occupancy but nevertheless hold academic value, for instance, she explained. It’s also important to distinguish between different kinds of campus spaces, she continued: “Are we talking about learning spaces? Co-curricular spaces? Athletic spaces?”

Yet while the space question is “complex,” it’s critical, Brown said. “Space is as important a resource as our staff, our faculty, our funding. It needs to be stewarded with care.”

AASCU is seeking to optimize space use as part of a major student-centered course-scheduling initiative. While the main goal is boosting student success by curbing problems such as peak-hour course bottlenecks, it also aims to make more of participating campuses’ available resources—namely physical space. According to information from AASCU, the program’s pilot with 11 regional universities saw a 12 percent increase in students completing first-year English and math courses, with Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, in particular, boosting classroom utilization by 5 percent.

Nic Halverson, CEO of Occuspace—a firm that works with the Society for College and University Planning on space issues in higher education—said that “underutilized campus space is very much a real thing, and I don’t think it gets enough attention relative to how much it costs institutions every year.” Based on Occuspace’s own benchmarking report, average utilization of campus building space fell to 45 percent in fall 2025, from 53 percent a year before. A spring 2026 update found daily peak utilization was up six to eight percentage points from the previous spring across classrooms, offices and open workspaces. But Occuspace notes that most institutions target utilization rates of at least 70 percent, meaning there’s still a significant gap between how physical infrastructure is used and student and faculty needs.

Beyond that lost potential, Occuspace also estimates that unused space—much of which still requires utilities and upkeep—costs higher education $79 billion annually.

Consistent with AASCU’s work and other research, Halverson attributed unused space to traditional course planning around peak schedules (think Tuesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.). Enrollment declines factor in, too, he said, including at the kinds of regional publics where surveyed CBOs report the lowest utilization rates. He also cited more hybrid work and online instruction across higher education, and siloed budgeting that keeps facilities, academic affairs, student services and outsourced service-provider staff from making joint portfolio decisions about empty space.

Recent cuts to federal grants have impacted labs, Halverson added. And many institutions face resistance when seeking to cut office space, even where employees have no intention of returning to the office full-time: “People don’t want to give up their assigned seat, even if they only go to campus once or twice a month. It’s a political status.”

Adaptive Reuse, Public-Private Partnerships and Optimization

Optimizing classroom space use is one thing. Rethinking all manner of underused campus space is another. Yet, the most interesting space moves aren’t always dramatic, Halverson said. More often than selling off big buildings, it’s “consolidating underused floors, converting lightly used offices into student collaboration or advising spaces, rightsizing classroom inventories, or aligning custodial and HVAC to actual use so dollars follow people instead of square-footage assumptions.”

One trend in repurposing existing campus space—what’s known as adaptive reuse—is turning un- or underused buildings into student success hubs. These co-locate key student services for ease of access and encourage more collaboration between various offices. One example: Truman State University in Missouri recently turned a landmark building that had fallen out of use into a comprehensive Student Success Center.

Libraries, some of which have less need for space in the digital age, are also being repurposed as third places for community and connection.

In another kind of trend—leaning into the health care fields—St. Bonaventure University in New York renovated the Francis Hall historic seminary to house the Dennis R. DePerro School of Health Professions. The school has a 3,000-square-foot diagnosis lab, three exam rooms, 20 clinic exam tables and inpatient-style beds. The building’s old chapel, previously de-consecrated to serve as an event space, now accommodates a student common area.

St. Bonaventure University

Rethinking campus space isn’t without risk. George Washington University has faced blowback for the sale of its Virginia Science and Technology campus to Amazon Data Services, which plans to build a data center. The university said this week that it has no role in the campus’s future development. The University of Maine at Orono is also facing questions about its public-private partnership with a developer to turn vacant campus buildings into a hotel. According to local reports, the hotel has underperformed and the university plans to house students there to offset contracted costs. The university did not respond to a request for comment about the deal.

Brown, of AASCU, said that in her experience, public-private partnerships around campus space can work: “You just have to assess, ‘Is this central to our mission and to our core?’”

Ruth Johnston, practice lead with the National Association of College and University Business Officers’ consulting arm, said that renting campus space to vendors and other entities to accommodate student needs—from hair care to banking, childcare and passport services—is increasingly common. Finding space for esports and recreation activities such as pickleball is also on the uptick. And even as labs have been upended by federal funding cuts, universities continue to need space for research and are finding ways to repurpose instead of build new, she added.

In general, Johnston said, and increasingly, “schools are doing utilization studies to see how they can better use the space they have or repurpose it.”

Elliot Felix, partner and higher education sector lead at the firm Buro Happold, has worked on a number of campus space projects, including the University of Michigan’s renovation of Weiser Hall—formerly the Dennison Building—into a home for interdisciplinary and internationally focused units within the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. He wrote in his recent book, The Connected College: Leadership Strategies for Student Success, “Your new mindset should be ‘grow in place and online’ rather than add new space,” and that the “most sustainable building is the one you don’t build.”

Felix said this week that rethinking campus space can sometimes mean tearing down old buildings that are weighing down balance sheets with deferred maintenance. It also means thinking about sustainability, with the built environment accounting for roughly 40 percent of carbon emissions, he said. And it means being intentional, balancing student needs and expectations with the realities of the current environment for higher education.

“Historically, universities have been steadily adding students and, with them, space,” he said. “But as enrollment has slowed, adding space has continued, creating a surplus.”

Pointing to Gordian’s annual State of Facilities in Higher Education reports, Felix said that colleges added space faster than they added students for much of the past 20 years. With competition for students increasing, it’s “also not surprising that institutions are investing in residence halls, recreation and wellness” and other facilities to attract them, he said. Still, Gordian’s most recent data indicates that campus expansion is giving way to rightsizing.

Regional public universities may be among those most struggling in this new environment. But Cecilia M. Orphan, associate professor of higher education at the University of Denver and founding director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges, described them as original adaptive reusers, having “fought over time to establish bounded campus grounds that remain accessible to the local community but also create the feeling of a campus for students.”

Many regional publics were “originally housed in buildings not intended for education (e.g., abandoned office buildings, underused shipyards, hotels, high schools no longer in use) and so have long made do with buildings not well suited to offering education,” she explained via email. And while deferred maintenance remains a problem, Orphan said she’s encouraged by innovation, including around private partnerships that seek to “re-vision how buildings are used and possibly generate revenue while rehabbing old buildings.” Case in point: Metropolitan State University in Denver’s campus brewery and hotel, where students work jobs relevant to their studies.

“RPUs could also consider lending or leasing their buildings/physical assets to nonprofits, local businesses, schools, etc.,” she said.

Halverson, of Occuspace, underscored that the space stakes are high for higher education in general. The opportunity, he said, “is treating occupancy as an operating input—like enrollment or research dollars—so portfolio, energy and service decisions get made with the same seriousness.”