US colleges face huge bills

UNITED STATES universities and colleges face a massive $26 billion r bill to wipe out their backlog of building repairs and maintenance, a report has found.

The cost, $5.7 billion of which represent urgently needed work, threaten the ability of higher education institutions to carry out their missions, according to the Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers.

Public institutions have more deferred maintenance than their private counterparts. Public four-year masters universities face the largest outlay, $5,980 million, followed by public research universities with $5,238 million.

These also had the largest backlog of urgent deferred maintenance. The survey of 400 universities and colleges found that research universities, which represent 8 per cent of all higher education instiutions, account for more than one third of total deferred maintenance needs. The average per institution was $13.7 million.

Harvey Kaiser, the author of A Foundation To Uphold - A Study of Facilities Conditions at US Colleges and Universities, wrote that the $26 billion estimate could be conservative, as figures generally do not include infrastructure other than for buildings. If this was true, the bill could be as high as $32.5 billion, with urgent needs totalling $7.1 billion.

The report found that the maintenance backlog would continue to grow unless adequate resources for capital reinvestment were made available.

Institutions were becoming less able to afford deferred maintenance as annual capital funding grants continued to fall, and many were urged to seek external funds to reverse the trend.

The maintenance problem would only be solved if leaders recognised the impact of unsatisfactory facilities conditions on higher education. "An ambivalent policy in regard to campus facilities conditions will hamper society's overall ability to gain what it seeks from higher education," Mr Kaiser wrote.