Paragraph 2 is worth more discussion. I work for a moderate-sized private university in an urban environment. Beyond the startup and labor (staffing, administra

Paragraph 2 is worth more discussion. I work for a moderate-sized private university in an urban environment. Beyond the startup and labor (staffing, administration) costs of the amenities, they require real estate as well. While suburban/rural universities may have options for constructing new buildings, we have to rely on purchasing real estate in a fluctuating market. Then we have to re-purpose it, often bringing it up to modern health codes. This is expensive to undertake. A ramification of purchasing real estate, for amenities in current demand, is that we can get stuck with expensive real estate when enrollments are down and, correspondingly, the amenities in those buildings are less used. The amenities come due to demand. But, they're costly. When amenity use is down, we're kind of stuck with those costs unless we can unload or re-purpose the real estate. [EDIT: Added "costs" in sentence 3 paragraph 1.]