[SkyPuncher]

Market bloat.

“univ of Solaris” just upgraded their facilities so “Solaris state” feels compelled to compete or risk losing out on attracting top talent. Over decades, this means basically every higher education facility has a ridiculous amount of space that’s completely under utilized or poorly utilized. Spaces that look great during admission tours, but don’t actually get used.

I went to a small, rather frugal private university. They largely escaped the “chasing the jones”. Even then, I could walk through dozens and dozens of labs that were only utilized 10 to 20 hours per week. The worst of these offenders were the “modern” labs that always got shown in the tours. Some of them might host a single class per week for a single semester per year.

At the big universities, it seems even worse.

These utilization rates would have any regular business questioning the need for their expense in it.

[inglor_cz]

20 hours per week feels fine to me, at least there is some slack for unplanned experiments. I certainly do have rooms in my house which I actively use for less than 20 hours per week, and I don't consider them useless.

A single class per week is ridiculous, though.