Colleges and universities across the country are burdened with inefficiently utilized facilities, leading to unnecessary costs, wasted space, and misplaced financial priorities. This policy brief examines the systemic mismanagement of campus facilities and proposes market-based reforms to legislatures and trustees in order to optimize space usage,…

Trans people's use of single-sex toilet facilities has become the subject of public attention, academic debate and research in recent years. One common solution is to offer transgender students access to an alternative toilet or changing space, such as an accessible toilet. However, in this paper, I critically engage with the suggestion that…

Poor indoor environmental quality impairs student health and decreases academic performance, yet many school facilities are in disrepair, creating subpar learning conditions. In a 2020 national survey, half of U.S. school districts reported needing to update or replace at least two building systems in many schools. Among the most common unmet…

The increasing prevalence of private tutoring has received minimal scholarly attention in the United States. We use over 25 years of geocoded data on the universe of U.S. private tutoring centers to estimate the size and growth of this industry and to identify predictors of tutoring center locations. We document four important facts. First, from…

The commentary argues that we need to address the wide variance in school building quality under and after COVID-19. Evidence suggests that historical underinvestment in school facility capital and maintenance has created unhealthy school buildings across the nation. Federal funding and research is necessary to ensure that schools are healthy…

In this teaching commentary, we describe a re-positioning of office hours from private faculty offices to public spaces such as student centers and cafes. We argue that this shift promotes faculty-student interaction, lowers barriers to help-seeking behavior, and facilitates collaboration among students. We highlight the power dynamics of private…

The purpose of this article is to introduce the new "Acoustic Standard for Physical Education Teaching Environments ANSI/ASA S12.60-2019/Part 4" and share the research evidence that formed the basis for developing this physical education-specific standard, provide an overview of how the standard was developed, and offer practical…

School bathrooms are liminal spaces where notions about intimacy and one's public persona are configured and where issues such as sex and gender are centrally experienced and proved. These learnings are partially scripted by architectural design and pedagogical rules but not fully captured by them. In this article, I intend to historicise these…

Over recent years, researchers have paid increasing attention to the built environment of universities. In this article we extend these studies through a consideration of the spatial experiences of particular users: doctoral students. Examining data from a qualitative study conducted in Aotearoa New Zealand, we argue that doctoral students 'read'…

School plants are indispensable for effective realization of school goals and objectives. This is because the successful implementation of school curriculum is dependent on the school plants, which refer to the physical facilities available in the school system, that are provided in the school. The insurance of school plants serves as a means of…

This paper features an expanded Web-based "Facilities Performance Indicators (FPI) Report." The purpose of APPA: Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers (APPA's) Facilities Performance Indicators is to provide a representative set of statistics about facilities in educational institutions. The goal for this year was to…

This article mainly discusses the integration of smart home technology and interior environment design under the background of the Internet, as well as their application in the field of education. First, the basic concepts of smart home technology and interior environment design are introduced. Then, the opportunities and challenges in their…

This article explores the tension - in both positive and negative senses - of an aquarium's internal and external equity work. The article parses out this tension, especially reflecting on where the equity work lives, where it gets messy, and who is doing the work. It centers on the tensions around positionality for a woman of color initially…

On October 20, 2023, Red Crow Community College ("Mikaisto") board of governors, elders, staff, and students made their grand entry into their long-awaited new campus. This marked a new era for adult education on the Kainai First Nation Blood Tribe, in Stand Off, Alberta, Canada. The college's former campus was located at St. Mary's…

This study is the first to empirically examine how school districts allocate resources in response to capital investment revenue from statewide penny sales taxes (called SAVE funds), and whether SAVE funds affect student outputs (i.e., educational achievement). We found evidence that school districts do not use SAVE funds to increase capital…