Despite having one of the largest campus areas and student bodies in the country, Ohio State’s Physical Facilities maintained campus last year with below average funding.
Conducted every two years by the Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers, the Comparative Costs and Staffing Report is the only comprehensive collection of facility-related costs and personnel information for colleges and universities.
All Big Ten institutions are listed in the report, which also includes colleges such as: University of Washington, University of Texas, University of Arizona, University of Missouri and the University of California, Los Angeles.
The document compares data from the custodial services, roads and grounds crews, maintenance and utilities departments.
Custodial services at OSU maintained 10,716,566 square feet on campus last year. The budget given for custodial purposes was $12,262,869, which came out to be $1.14 per square foot. This was below the average of $1.19 for the other institutions listed in the report.
“(OSU and other Big Ten schools) all suffer from reductions in funding and are trying to do more with less,” said Becky Hines, director of building services. “I believe competition enables us to keep our cleaning at a higher level.”
With a budget of $3,732,684, the roads and grounds crew maintained 1,270 acres last year. The crew received $2,939 per acre, which was far below the $5,325 per acre average.
As with the other departments, last year, the maintenance department also had a below par budget to use. The department was given $12,669,956 to cover 11,954,878 square feet of space.
“We have to do the best we can with the funding that is provided,” said Dick Lighthiser, director of maintenance. “We cannot spend more money that is allocated, even if it is needed.”
The maintenance staff had $1.06 per square foot to spend compared to the average of $1.25 per square foot among other universities in the report.
“We set priorities as to what maintenance items are most important like heating, lighting, water leaks and air conditioning,” Lighthiser said. “Things such as decorating and interior finishes have a very low priority.”
For utility costs, $33,664,356 was given to cover 19,382,052 square feet. This averaged out to be $1.74 per square foot, again well below the $2.04 average for other institutions.
The report showed the University of Minnesota was above average in spending in all four departments, while Michigan State University spent the lowest amount of money per department.
“The cleanliness of the campus buildings plays a large part in attracting and retaining high-quality students, faculty, researchers and staff,” Hines said. “Increased budget dollars would enable us to hire more people than we have, along with additional state of the art equipment to keep our buildings at a high level of cleanliness.
