CP&M's 2009 College Construction Report

College Planning and Management's annual College Construction Report is something that many SCUPers eagerly await. This year's is here (PDF). It starts by noticing some frozen projects, then author Paul Abramson, who has been doing this report since 1995, looks over the history of the annual college and university capital construction budget:

I have been tracking college construction for College Planning & Management magazine since 1995, when $6.1B worth of construction was put in place (see Table 1). Construction stayed close to $6B a year from 1995 through 1999, when it reached $6.8B. . . . Starting in 2000, college construction began to shift into a higher gear. In 2000 it broke the $7B barrier for the first time ever, then jumped to $9.8B and then $11B the next two years, largely in response to a growing demand for seats in college classrooms and beds in residence halls. . . . By 2005, annual construction was up above $13B. In 2006, it topped $15B before falling back slightly to $14.5B in 2007, as reported a year ago. . . . At that time, I suggested that the drop to $14.5B in completed construction probably was not significant. But the projections we were showing for major cuts in construction spending in 2008 could be a sign of significant belt-tightening and even cutbacks. . . . As the United States and world economies have continued to deteriorate in the last year, those projected cuts have now occurred. College construction fell to just under $13.3B in 2008, a drop of $1.2B from the year before, and it is projected to fall even further in 2009. And that is construction funding. It says nothing about the funding necessary to furnish and staff the new buildings.