Brick and mortar in higher education needs attention, too

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The forecasted challenges facing our state, now and in the years to come, are daunting — an aging population, workforce shortages and keeping our economy strong in the face of intense competition. These challenges are significant, but we are confident that they can be overcome because Minnesota’s history shows that careful planning, strategic collaboration and wise investments build a brighter future for us all.

One outcome we know Minnesota needs to build a strong future, now and in the coming years, is the ongoing infusion of skilled leaders and talented leaders into the state’s workforce — who together drive and expand the state’s economy. A foundation for this and other successes is strong support of its two public higher education systems, the University of Minnesota and Minnesota State.

State leaders have charged these two systems with educating Minnesotans to become Minnesota’s future workforce and leaders, and attracting talent from beyond our borders. Minnesota’s public higher education systems conduct the research and develop innovative technologies and practices that drive business growth and provide the state with most of its teachers, nurses, peace officers, tradespeople and IT workers, and so many others. For more than 170 years Minnesota’s public colleges and universities have played a vital role in the state’s well-earned reputation as one of the best places in the nation to work, live and raise a family. Public higher education must continue to play this integral role in the state’s future.

We are proud to answer this call every day. But aging infrastructure impedes our efforts.

Deferred maintenance and renewal is a national problem, one that goes well beyond higher education, but the very real infrastructure barriers students, staff, educators and researchers encounter on Minnesota’s public college and university campuses must be addressed now. From outdated labs and classrooms to basic maintenance, some of Minnesota’s greatest public assets are in desperate need of reinvestment, preservation and care.

Almost half of the state’s higher education buildings are more than a half-century old. As homeowners know, maintenance and updates become recurring and predictable as buildings age. While some of our buildings have specialized needs for education and research, many have the same problems found in an old home: heating systems that struggle through Minnesota winters, drafty windows that make climate control difficult and expensive, and leaky roofs that have led to disastrous, expensive-to-fix results.

Just as prudent homeowners address problems early to minimize future issues and costs, the state should be sufficiently investing — on an ongoing and predictable basis — in maintaining and keeping up the buildings used to produce the talent our state needs to drive economic growth.

This isn’t a new problem. The Minnesota Legislature first enacted the Higher Education Asset Preservation and Replacement statute in 1994, acknowledging that public campus buildings and properties are important, complex and large in scale, and that their care and investment must be priorities.

State funding for this work has diminished notably in the past decade compared to the 10 years prior, a decline that doesn’t account for inflation. During that time, the cost of materials and labor have grown considerably as the state’s higher education infrastructure challenges multiply. Not only has capital funding for public universities and colleges declined in total dollars, it’s also shrunk as a share of the state’s total capital investment.

We recognize the capital investments that public colleges and universities need are expensive — hundreds of millions of dollars annually just to maintain buildings at their current state; more to begin making meaningful progress against this challenge. But even more staggering is the cost of inaction against a growing and harrowing backlog of deferred maintenance that’s already well into the billions. Predictable infrastructure repairs that are delayed or left undone become emergency repairs that must be made, forcing the use of college and university operating funds that would otherwise be used to serve students.

Minnesotans will continue to depend on public colleges and universities to produce waves of talented graduates. Across the campuses we lead, we are preparing people of all ages to enter jobs in the most important sectors of our state’s economy, as well as the emerging sectors of the future. But students need and expect facilities that will mirror the settings they’ll work in after graduation. We cannot recruit, retain and graduate the best students to fill Minnesota’s acute workforce needs unless we provide learning spaces that prepare them for modern careers.

We effectively use funding we receive in support of our students and Minnesota’s future. We appreciate Gov. Tim Walz starting the session conversation by proposing a capital budget that includes $103 million for each of the state’s systems of higher education. But we also will continue to make the case to fund our total requests. Full funding allows us to tackle more than 200 asset preservation projects at 150 different locations around Minnesota that thousands of students, faculty, staff and visitors depend on each day. Funding our capital requests will have a real impact that will ripple across multiple generations of Minnesotans, and ultimately will allow us to do our significant part in helping Minnesota achieve more in spite of the challenges we collectively face.

Jeff Ettinger is the interim president for the five campuses of the University of Minnesota and Scott Olson is chancellor for the 33 colleges and universities of Minnesota State.