College Building Boom Approaches $1 Trillion

Postsecondary institutions continue to invest heavily in capital assets and the cumulative investment across public and private institutions has crossed $900 billion, an increase of 27% over a five-year period. The capital investment growth rates are almost identical for both public institutions and private non-profit institutions as noted in the visuals below. For-profit private institutions, which are not required to disclose asset detail, are flat over the same five-year period at roughly $8 billion. We crunched the numbers using the new Finance Interactive, which we anticipate will be available next week. 

 

Public Institutions

 

 Private Non-Profit Institutions

 

Roughly 75% of the capital assets are invested in buildings with equipment, including art and library collections taking up most of the balance. 

 

Share This Story

Similar Posts

  • Room and Board Cost Increases Slowing

    After three straight years of 3-5% increases, room and board annual growth has finally slowed to a more pedestrian 2-3%. In recent years, universities have invested heavily in on-campus facilities and presumably passed these costs to the students at a rate greater than inflation. One administrator once told me that on-campus facilities…

  • Outpatient Medicare Hospital Costs up 13%

    The 2016 outpatient procedure data shows overall hospital volume up 11% from 2015. Using data from the Outpatient Procedure Analysis Interactive, we also found that the volume times the average full cost (weighted average cost) on a procedure basis has increased 13.3%. We ran the numbers several ways – first…

  • Distance Learning Growth Continues

    In one of my favorite videos of my kid’s era, Grover from Sesame Street taught us the difference between near and far. I don’t think Grover had in mind today’s high tech tools and social media interaction when he taught us this principle. Distance Education continues to be a hot…

  • Self-Funded Research Remains the Trend in Higher Education

    Research and development expenditures continued their flat growth since 2011 according to the most recent data from the National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development Survey (HERD). Research expenditures increased 1.66% for all reporting institutions from 2013 to 2014 and have increased cumulatively only 4.76% since 2011.  The primary…

  • Regional Variations in Opioid Prescribing Rates

    Given the state of the opioid crisis, any meaningful data is valuable. So when CMS released three years of Opioid Part D prescription data in November, we all rejoiced. CMS also released a mapping tool to analyze the data. While mapping tools can be effective, they can also get in…