Note: Louisiana legislators will decide what to do with a significant surplus of cash available to the state in the next legislative session in March. Ahead of the session, The Reveille is dedicating a string of stories looking at LSU’s infrastructure. This is the ninth story in the ongoing series.
Although LSU has some of the highest deferred maintenance needs out of Louisiana’s public universities, compared to other flagship universities, they are on the moderate, if not lower, end of the scale.
Since some states are much larger, more populated or wealthier than others, making one-to-one comparisons between flagship universities doesn’t paint a full picture.
Some states have more than one university that can be defined as a flagship, which traditionally means the oldest public university in the state, but can also be defined as the primary school in a university system. Fifty-nine universities in the country meet one or more definitions of a flagship university.
Using the same metrics in the Louisiana university comparison, The Reveille collected data from 12 flagship colleges. Each school’s deferred maintenance needs are broken down into cost per student and cost per square foot of each campus.
Breaking it down
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Louisiana State University
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Total deferred maintenance needs: $659 million
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Cost per square foot: $43.07
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Cost per student: $16,879.44
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University of Alabama
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Total deferred maintenance needs: $575 million
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Cost per square foot: $54.24
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Cost per student: $14,910.67
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University of Florida
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Total deferred maintenance needs: $888 million
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Cost per square foot: $45.07
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Cost per student: $16,957.24
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University of Georgia
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Total deferred maintenance needs: $105 million
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Cost per square foot: $5.67
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Cost per student: $2,792.12
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University of Hawaii Manoa
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Total deferred maintenance needs: $709 million
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Cost per square foot: $116.23
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Cost per student: $37,124.31
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University of Houston
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Total deferred maintenance needs: $500 million
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Cost per square foot: $30,67
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Cost per student: $11,021.96
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University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
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Total deferred maintenance needs: $800 million
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Cost per square foot: $57.55
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Cost per student: $15,287.31
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University of Kentucky
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Total deferred maintenance needs: $2.7 billion
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Cost per square foot: $450
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Cost per student: $90,042.02
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University of Maine
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Total deferred maintenance needs: $2 billion
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Cost per square foot: $229.88
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Cost per student: $91,224.23
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University of Minnesota
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Total deferred maintenance needs: $5 billion
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Cost per square foot: $156.99
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Cost per student: $100,000
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University of Mississippi
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Total deferred maintenance needs: $300 million
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Cost per square foot: $63.83
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Cost per student: $13,726.21
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University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
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Total deferred maintenance needs: $921 million
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Cost per square foot: $83.73
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Cost per student: $29,202.87
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University of North Dakota
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Total deferred maintenance needs: $460 million
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Cost per square foot: $70.77
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Cost per student: $33,522.81
In terms of sheer total cost, LSU is approximately in the middle of the list. In the cost-per-square foot breakdown, LSU ranks among the lowest. In terms of per-student cost, LSU again ranks among the middle.
Building it up
The deferred maintenance backlog is an imperfect measure of campus infrastructure.
For starters, the backlog is not intended to be cleared. New items are continually added and some projects will be eliminated from the list before they can be attended to.
Another factor is that the total is constantly growing. According to Roger Husser, assistant vice president for Planning, Design and Construction, the total grows by about $20 million every year. At the end of last year, the total was reported to be about $640 million. As of February 2022, the total is $659 million.
Another factor worth considering is the fact that with the rising costs of construction materials, the actual cost of carrying out a deferred maintenance project in 2022 is likely higher than when items were added to the backlog in years past.
Any university is unlikely to have the total cost of its deferred maintenance needs to drop on deferred maintenance in one go. The projects are chipped away at and more projects are added year by year.
Even if Gov. John Bel Edwards’ proposed $108.9 million for deferred maintenance clears the legislature, which is a big if, LSU will receive just a small slice of that. That figure would be allotted to deferred maintenance projects across the state, not just to those at institutions of higher education.
Last year, LSU received $5 million from the legislature for deferred maintenance. It paid for 12 of over 7,000 projects on the deferred maintenance list.
Outliers
The data needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as there are a few major outliers. The University of Minnesota has a deferred maintenance backlog of $5 billion dollars. While the building footprint of their campus is about double the size of ours, their total needs are over seven times the needs of LSU.
The University of Kentucky has a deferred maintenance backlog of $2.7 billion, despite having less than half of the square footage of LSU. The University of Maine is in the same boat, with a backlog of $2 billion and just over half the square footage of LSU.
The University of Georgia has the opposite problem. With a deferred maintenance backlog of $105 million, UGA has a larger building footprint than LSU and less than one sixth of the backlog.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why these schools have such different deferred maintenance needs, as it could be impacted by environmental, social or political factors that vary from state to state. It’s worth noting due to the imperfect nature of any comparison.
At any rate, LSU does not appear to be in a significantly worse state than other major universities.
