Does hybrid working spell end of the individual faculty office?

While many scholars still enjoy a room of one’s own on campus, the shift towards shared offices and hot-desking has moved up a gear as several universities open major academic buildings with few or no single-occupancy offices.

Among the UK institutions with new or rebuilt buildings in the past 12 months including far fewer individual offices are the universities of Glasgow, Leicester and Sheffield, plus Nottingham Trent University. The renovated UCL Institute of Education reflects the “rising popularity of flexible, collaborative and less territorial spaces for staff members”, according to the architects.

But the loss of individual faculty offices has not proved a hit with all academics, with one Russell Group professor telling Times Higher Education that the need to either share an office or hot-desk had driven him to early retirement.

“The offices were tiny – they were too small to keep books, papers and files or to hold meetings,” he said. Booking meeting rooms for student hours was “impractical”, “another hassle” and “may not be possible if the need for a meeting is urgent”, he added.

Other academics agreed. One stated that “big shared spaces are empty because they’re not conducive to work”, while another described “room space carnage” as lecturers struggled to book appropriate locations for teaching.

However, the steep decline in office use seen in other sectors since the Covid pandemic appears to have been mirrored in higher education, with one Princeton University politics professor estimating that office usage was down 60 per cent on pre-2020 levels, albeit with the caveat that “nothing would stir the faculty pitchforks more” than a move to co-working or hot-desking.

In December, two Republican state senators vowed to hold hearings into why so many “expensive workspaces” were left empty at the University of Wisconsin after an audit found that less than a third of desks were occupied on average.

There is no reliable occupancy data for UK academia, but a 2021 study by the Association of University Directors of Estates (AUDE) found that 70 per cent of universities anticipated having fewer individual offices following the pandemic.

Jane Harrison-White, AUDE’s executive director, said that the rise of hybrid working and emptier offices since 2020 meant “this situation is ready for close examination”.

“Many universities already experienced underuse of some types of spaces including academic offices and teaching spaces” prior to the pandemic, she said. “Covid led to more home-working and the status quo has not been restored since.”

There was, however, the need for “nuance” when considering office use, said Ms Harrison-White. “Universities don’t have to match what is expected in the commercial world and student experience…isn’t served necessarily by open-plan offices for academics.”

However, David Howard, a professor in Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, said more office sharing was “probably overdue” given that his institution saw “20 per cent occupancy on a good day”.

If “companies can figure out how to make it work, academia could too”, he said.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com