The future for campuses is digital first
Universities will consider selling real estate to fund digital programmes and research
Source | campusmorningmail.com.au
Curated content from CISCO and OPTUS
A major study of university executives has found that they plan to re-allocate funds away from bricks and mortar and towards technology. The shift has been fuelled by what executives think a “COVID normal” environment is going to look like, with the proportion of funding spend on physical versus digital infrastructure to change by approximately 11 per cent in the direction of digital. Even more revealing, is that nearly half of all institutions said they would consider liquidating real estate assets to fund digital programs and research.
An independent study commissioned by Cisco and Optus – The Tipping Point for Digitisation of Education and Campuses – elicited responses from 78 per cent of universities. and Headline findings include:
- collaboration technology will continue to dominate contemporary education and become even more valuable as new features are added. This was also born out in an independent study conducted by the National Industry Innovation Network (NIIN) anchored by La Trobe and Curtin universities
- students will start to differentiate institutions on the quality of their digital services and engagement, perhaps more than the quality of buildings
- there will a greater priority given to informal learning commons, outdoor spaces and innovation/maker facilities at the expense of formal lecture theatres
- less people will be physically on campus, driven by more flexible work and learn from home arrangements. The challenge for universities is luring students back to campus by making it more experiential and alive
- campus safety will rise in prominence including measures to guarantee a safe return to campus, including the ability to use technology to contact trace more effectively
- energy efficiency and space utilisation will be treated as table stakes with universities seeking to automate campus operations for higher value activities
The priority given to digital does not mean that physical campuses will drift into the background, but campus design will almost certainly change. For example, the campus will increasingly become a place for collaboration and peer-to-peer learning. This will drastically reduce demand for traditional spaces such as lecture theatres and create more demand for technology-enabled hybrid learning spaces.
