Average space utilization on U.S. campuses dropped to 45% this past fall, eight points lower than the year before. Office space fell even further, down 19 points to a weekly peak of 52%.[1] Meanwhile, 90% of universities now have hybrid work policies, but only a quarter of them connect on-campus days to actual office space planning.[2]
That gap between how campuses are used and how they're managed is the story of the next five years. Here's where it's headed.
1. Space planning catches up to how people actually work
The "build more" era is over. Over the past few years, 68% of universities have exited at least one lease, 52% have declined planned construction, and 48% have demolished buildings rather than maintain them.[2] Institutions are starting to plan around demand, rather than guessing at it.
Occupancy sensors, badge data, and room-booking systems already tell you which buildings sit empty on Wednesday afternoons and which ones are packed. In five years, that data won't just inform an annual space report, it'll drive real-time decisions about which buildings to heat, which conference rooms are most popular, and which departments actually need a dedicated floor. The "one person, one office" model is fading, and campuses that redesign around actual usage patterns will free up funds for the things that matter most: instruction, research, and student life.
2. Energy management becomes a budget line, not a mission statement
U.S. colleges and universities spend more than $6 billion a year on energy, and a single research lab can burn through nearly twice what a standard classroom building does.[3] That's too much money to manage with annual utility bills and good intentions.
Expect submetering, building automation, and weather-responsive HVAC scheduling to become standard rather than aspirational. These systems pay for themselves in reduced utility costs while also supporting the sustainability commitments boards and accreditors increasingly expect. Solar canopies and green roofs still matter for visibility, but the real progress will happen in the mechanical rooms and the software that runs them.
3. Space, maintenance, and assets stop living in separate systems
Right now, most facilities teams juggle a work order system, a space database, an asset registry, and a spreadsheet nobody trusts. That's time-intensive to maintain and worse to make decisions from — you can't calculate research dollars per square foot if your research space data and your funding data live in different places (only 10% of universities can do that calculation today).[2]
The next five years will involve bringing these systems together. A connected platform that tracks space, maintenance, and assets in one place means a facilities director can see, in a single view, what a building costs to run, what condition it's in, and how much it's being used. Such a system is not a nice-to-have, it is the tool a stretched team can use to make defensible decisions when every dollar gets scrutinized.
4. AI shows up in maintenance schedules, not just in headlines
Most campuses aren't AI-ready yet, and that's honest to admit. Data is too fragmented, infrastructure is uneven, and the loudest AI pilots aren't always the most useful ones (for more on this topic, see our blog AI Won’t Fix Your Facilities Program.)[4] But the practical applications are already being proven: predictive maintenance that flags a failing chiller before it fails, digital twins that model a building's performance before you spend money on it, and smart sensors that adjust energy use without a human checking a dashboard.
Five years from now, this won't feel like new technology. It'll feel like maintenance and operations successfully getting ahead of problems instead of reacting to them, the way they always aimed to.
The common thread
Every one of these shifts points to the same thing: campuses that connect their data will make better decisions than campuses that don't. Space, energy, maintenance, and assets aren't separate problems — they're one operation, and the institutions that manage them as such will get more out of every square foot and every dollar.
If you're rethinking how your team manages space, energy, and assets across campus, Planon's connected platform is built for exactly that shift. Learn more here about how Planon can support your campus.
References
1. Occuspace, "New Report from Occuspace Finds U.S. Campuses Face Significant Underutilization," cited in Facilities Dive, "Higher ed institutions see drastic drop in space utilization"
2. CampusIQ & Huron, "2026 State of Space Management in Higher Education"
3. Higher Ed Dive (sponsored by CampusIQ), "4 facility priorities that make the grade in 2026"
4. EAB, "4 trends in higher ed Facilities management—and how leaders should respond"