Think of college, and your mind may well conjure images of ivy creeping up the walls of stately, gray, Gothic stone buildings in which the deepest of learning occurs. Such buildings exist, of course, but reality is not so pleasantly simple: Those buildings cost big money to erect and maintain, money many colleges may not have. What’s more, students often demand that more fun stuff, rather than deep learning, occur inside them. Or so a new report suggests.

“College and university enrollments are, in aggregate, either stable or declining,” intones the report, titled “The State of Facilities in Higher Education: 2016 Benchmarks, Best Practices and Trends.” The paper is from Sightlines, an outfit that provides facilities data to academia. “In light of the building boom of recent years, many campuses now have more space to maintain and fewer students to fill it.”