As Universities Age, Billions-Worth of Projects on Table

This is about Ohio, but we all know that Ohio is far from alone in this.

Students often complain about the sticker shock of tuition costs. But it is Ohio’s aging public universities and colleges that are facing a multibillion dollar backlog of construction needs.

The Ohio Board of Regents has estimated that 37.2 million square feet of education-related space requires rehabbing or rebuilding at the whopping cost of $3.9 billion to $5 billion. And while university presidents, officials and policymakers are scrambling to come up with all that money, a higher education building boom could provide a windfall for Ohio’s construction industry.