A new report from Gordian says deferred campus renewal is accelerating, with the college renovation backlog reaching its highest point in years. Deferred capital renewal hit $156 per gross square foot in 2025, an 8% year-over-year increase and nearly double 2007 levels, while spending on existing buildings reached only 73.5% of what’s needed to prevent the backlog from growing. Gordian frames the situation as structural underinvestment colliding with faster institutional change. The report points to longer-term risks, including “embodied debt” tied to deferred physical-capital needs and the possibility of future borrowing to address maintenance backlogs. At the same time, overall campus growth is slowing, and schools are increasingly “right-sizing” footprints in response to projected declines in traditional-aged student populations. For CFOs and boards, this is a risk-management story as much as a capital-planning story.