At HEFF, we host roundtable discussions on the real challenges facing facilities leaders at colleges and universities across higher education. These conversations are intentionally small so peers can talk openly about what’s happening on their campuses.
They’ve always been closed-door and unrecorded until now.
Using an AI note-taker and with the promise of anonymity, we were able to capture the conversation without attaching comments to any individual institution.
This discussion focused on a question showing up across higher ed right now: what happens when enrollment pressure, space issues, budget strain, and capital needs all start colliding at once.
The conversation moved quickly between enrollment shifts, housing expectations, campus footprint, funding uncertainty, and the rising cost of keeping projects moving.
Here’s what went down:
The conversation started with enrollment — specifically the “enrollment cliff.”
This isn’t theoretical. Leaders discussed projections of a 10–15% national decline in traditional college-aged students over the next decade, with some regions facing closer to 20–25%.
For some institutions, that’s already showing up. Enrollment has been flat for years. In other cases, it’s declining — sometimes unevenly across programs.
In a few cases, the impact has already moved beyond planning and into action.
Leaders described systems making the decision to consolidate or close smaller campuses after enrollment dropped to a fraction of what it was a decade ago.
Once that happens, the conversation shifts.
It’s no longer about adjusting the budget. It’s about rethinking the footprint.
And once the numbers start moving, everything else follows.
In a few cases, leaders described seeing multiple years of flat or declining enrollment at the same time that expectations for growth haven’t changed.
Hiring slows. Capital plans tighten. Projects get delayed or reconsidered.
Facilities teams feel that pressure early because they’re tied to all of it.
The conversation quickly moved from enrollment to where students are actually coming from.
For a lot of institutions, the traditional pipeline is no longer enough.
Community college partnerships are becoming more important. Workforce programs are growing. More students are looking for shorter, more targeted paths instead of a four-year degree.
Some campuses are responding by building stronger transfer relationships, developing certificate and badge programs tied to employer needs, and creating new ways to reach students earlier.
Others are still built around the assumption that the traditional student will come back.
That gap is starting to show.
The discussion made clear that enrollment strategy is no longer just about attracting more students. It is about understanding which students an institution is actually set up to serve.
Retention came up quickly, but not just in the usual way.
Housing was a major part of the conversation.
The expectations have changed. Students are not comparing residence halls to what they looked like ten or twenty years ago. They are comparing them to home, or to what they think they can get off campus.
Dining came up the same way.
At the same time, many institutions are still dealing with the financial aftereffects of COVID. Housing and dining reserves were used to stay operational, which left fewer dollars available for upgrades.
So the gap is getting wider.
The experience students expect keeps increasing. The ability to fund it has not always kept up.
That is starting to turn retention into a facilities issue, too.
Several leaders talked about tying facilities planning more directly to enrollment strategy — not just building where demand exists today, but looking more closely at where students are coming from, what they expect, and what might actually keep them on campus.
Space was one of the more honest parts of the conversation.
Most campuses have buildings or square footage that are not being used the way they were intended. Everyone knows it.
But giving it up is a different conversation.
Departments hold onto space because they always have. Shared governance makes change harder. And even when the data is clear, that does not mean action follows.
The challenge isn’t identifying the problem. It’s getting agreement on what happens next.
That leaves institutions trying to reduce footprint, improve utilization, and cut operating costs while still carrying buildings that no longer make much sense.
A few teams are starting to approach this differently.
Not just by measuring how often a room is used, but by combining utilization data with facility condition data. In other words, not just showing that a building is underused, but that it no longer supports the work happening inside it well enough to justify continued investment.
That is where the conversation starts to shift.
A few institutions are already acting on it.
Some are consolidating campuses. Others are trying to sell or repurpose buildings and parcels that no longer fit their long-term needs.
But even when the decision feels obvious, the process is rarely simple.
Ownership structures are messy. Some properties are state-owned. Some were donated. Some are tied to specific uses or expectations.
And in some markets, even finding a buyer is a challenge.
Freeing up the asset is one step. Actually, moving it is another.
Funding came up less as one headline issue and more as a constant background pressure.
Leaders talked about delayed dollars, changing expectations, and less predictability overall.
In some cases, money is still coming in. It is just not showing up when institutions are used to seeing it.
That changes behavior quickly.
Hiring slows. Teams hold off on commitments. Projects get pushed. Planning gets more conservative.
Facilities teams feel that uncertainty differently because the work doesn’t stop.
Buildings still have to run. Systems still need support. Critical work does not pause just because the budget is unsettled.
No one said projects were stopping.
But they are getting harder to land.
Costs are moving. Funding is inconsistent. And in some cases, institutions are having to go back more than once to secure full support for work that already seemed approved in principle.
That has changed how teams are budgeting.
Some are building in larger contingencies from the start. Others are scrutinizing estimates more closely and challenging costs that feel unclear.
At the same time, expectations across campus haven’t slowed down, which makes it harder to reset what’s realistic.
There is more friction in the process than there used to be.
Many campuses are still better at funding construction than funding what comes next.
Operations and maintenance came up repeatedly as the missing part of the conversation.
Several leaders talked about bringing those long-term costs into project discussions much earlier — not just what a building costs to construct, but what it will cost to run every year once it opens.
That sounds basic, but it has not always happened.
And when it doesn’t, the burden falls back on facilities teams to absorb another building without the staffing or operating support to match it.
That challenge is even more pronounced with highly specialized or donor-funded buildings, where expectations are high but the long-term cost of maintaining them isn’t always built into the plan.
Over time, that imbalance starts to compound.
No matter where the conversation went, deferred maintenance kept surfacing.
It sat underneath almost every other issue being discussed.
Enrollment pressure makes reinvestment harder. Budget cuts often hit operations first. Older buildings stay open longer than they should. New buildings come online without enough long-term support.
And so the backlog grows.
At some institutions, leaders talked openly about carrying buildings that no longer make sense to maintain but remain in use because there is no realistic path to replace, remove, or fully renovate them.
By the end of the discussion, it was clear this is not about one issue.
It is all of it at once.
Enrollment is shifting. Student expectations are changing. Space is misaligned. Projects cost more. Funding is less predictable. Deferred maintenance continues to build.
And facilities teams are in the middle of it.
Not just maintaining buildings, but helping institutions decide what stays, what gets funded, what gets rethought, and what has to wait.
No one in the room had a clean answer.
That wasn’t the point.
The value was in hearing how others are approaching the same problems. What they are trying. What is working. What is not.
Because right now, many campuses aren’t choosing between good and bad options.
They are making decisions with incomplete information — and living with the outcome.