UK: Technological challenges ahead

Centuries ago, the dreaming stone spires of Oxbridge's ancient colleges dominated the academic landscape, then came the civic red brick downtown universities of the industrial north, followed by the plate glass campus-style institutions of the 1960s and 1970s. In the early 1990s, polytechnics were metamorphosed into universities by the Conservatives. Now higher education institutions must face the challenge of the 'Google generation'.

Back in the 1950s, Jimmy Porter, the anti-hero in John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger, claimed his university wasn't even red-brick but white-tiled. Some 10 years later, life imitated art when Warwick University began to take shape in the Midlands' countryside with buildings clad in white tiles. The legacy of the 1960s' expansion is buildings that were only meant to last some 30 years; now they are costly to maintain and some are still riddled with asbestos or plagued with leaky flat roofs.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, many higher education institutions adopted an informal policy of 'deferred maintenance' which meant a more rapid deterioration of buildings. As Dr Wendy Piatt, Director General of the Russell Group of 20 research-led universities, said: "A decade ago, most universities were faced with a major backlog in infrastructure investment. Capital funding projects from government since then have greatly helped to reduce the proportion of university estates classified as being in very poor condition."

Russell Group institutions were investing heavily in almost all science disciplines on major refurbishment and new buildings. Many universities also have several 1960-1970s large non-science buildings that need modernising or replacing, so institutions can be spending around £50 to £60 million a year on academic capital programmes, she said.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) requires institutions to produce estate surveys so it can assess the condition of buildings and whether they are fit for purpose. For 2008-09, the council has allocated £902 million for earmarked capital grants. However, most institutions raise funds from their own resources, including fee income, selling surplus land and buildings, borrowing, public-private finance deals, and occasionally receiving cash from benefactors. (The UK is way behind America in raising cash from philanthropists.)

Warwick University, for example, began with 450 undergraduates and now has around 16,000 students. The university plans to expand its 'campus footprint' by 40% over the next 10 years at a cost of £400 million, raised from its own resources, and it will also be 'green'.
London Metropolitan University, created by the merger of two former polytechnics in 2002, recently opened a £30 million science centre with a ‘superlab’ of 280 workstations using traditional and digital technology. It also commissioned a graduate centre from the renowned architect Daniel Libeskind.

Higher education's next challenge is to meet the expectations of the 'Google generation', not only in using technology for teaching and learning but also in building design, said Professor David Baker, chair of GuildHE, an organisation of smaller higher education colleges and universities. Baker is also on the board of GISC, a joint information systems committee which promotes the innovative use of ICT to support education and research.

Baker pointed to the changing patterns of study, socialisation and lifestyle with students working and networking online, leaving the campus at weekends and evenings to work, and rising expectations, not only of students but parents – as paying customers. He did not envisage a wholesale move to distance learning, but changing technology would have a major impact on infrastructure: "This is a burning topic, it will make or break some higher education institutions in 10 to 15 years' time, if not in five to 10."

Another serious issue, Baker said, was the 'greenness' of the sector. Some older buildings on his campus at University College Plymouth St Mark and St John "leaked enough energy to light up most of north Plymouth" whereas the new ones were fuel-efficient.

A recent report from Universities UK, Greening Spires, gave examples of good practice: Bradford University is planning the first sustainable student village, Lincoln has an environmentally friendly campus at Brayford, and Southampton's professional services building was a pioneering project bringing staff and students together to learn how to produce a green building.

These lessons should be taken on board in the next expansion phase. Last month, the government announced that 20 new university campuses serving 10,000 students would be built in six years and issued a 'university challenge' to local authorities and regional development agencies to bid for funding a campus or college in their area. This is part of a drive to increase the number of young people going into higher education from 43% to 50% with £150 million from Hefce's development fund.