05 February 2019 
Martin Higgs, Communications Officer
AUDE Executive Director Jane White comments within an article in the Architects' Journal on university estates spend: "Has the university building gold rush run its course?"
As Jane comments: "The picture is complicated. The diversity of universities within the sector contributes to this. The UK’s biggest universities – the ones with international reputations and significant research-based income – may well be in a very different position to a small teaching university in terms of their ability to raise and service loans for estates investment.
And we should remember that some universities – Huddersfield comes to mind – are building new without borrowing.
But across the sector there are many similarities: every university competes for both domestic and international students and staff; every university awaits the outcome of the Augar review with some nervousness as the potential for disruption to existing business models is so great; every university wishes the uncertainty associated with Brexit was over; and every university tries to balance an affordable mix of new builds and maintaining older buildings and repurposing their learning and accommodation spaces.
We [as directors of estates] are just as interested in this latter aspect – reshaping learning spaces to current need – as we are in the rather grander new-build ‘statement building’."
The full article can be read on the Architects' Journal website.
