This article argues that the barrier is not measurement but behaviour: universities continue to allocate, book, and schedule space through cultural systems designed for an earlier model of teaching. It then considers three practical shifts that could improve utilisation without abandoning established metrics.
Universities have transformed dramatically since COVID 19. Hybrid delivery, asynchronous content, flipped classrooms, and active learning have become mainstream. Pedagogic change has been rapid, visible, and by many accounts profound.
In our previous article, we explored why space utilisation benchmarking remains one of the most powerful strategic tools available to higher education — and why median performance has barely shifted in two decades. If pedagogy has changed so radically, why does teaching space utilisation look almost exactly the same?
On the face of it, such sweeping change should have reshaped how teaching spaces are used, with some discernible impact on utilisation levels—positive or negative. Yet across the UK, US, and Australia, the data tell a different story: teaching space utilisation has barely shifted in more than a decade. Despite new teaching patterns, the headline measures—frequency, seat occupancy, and combined utilisation—remain strikingly consistent with those reported in the early 2010s.
In the UK, for example, combined utilisation still typically sits around <20–35% (with a sector median of about 27%). Although utilisation in other regions is not monitored as consistently, similar patterns of underuse are reported elsewhere. In the US, utilisation varies significantly across institutions, while Australian universities generally report moderate but still sub-optimal levels of teaching space use. Despite differing teaching trends and investment profiles, the overall picture is broadly consistent: education spaces are used far less intensively than planning models typically assume.
So how can teaching change so radically while observed space use stays almost completely static? The answer may be deceptively simple; the culture of space use has not altered to keep pace.
The Cultural Architecture Holding Utilisation in Place
While teaching delivery has modernised, the institutional structures that shape space use—allocation, booking, and scheduling—have remained essentially the same. We can still divide space into three categories:
Allocated Space
Departments retain, or obtain, long term room ownership, regardless of how closely it matches actual need.
Booked Space
Rooms are reserved but may or may not be used—there is no utilisation incentive built into the system.
Scheduled Space
Even when an activity is fully timetabled, it remains vulnerable to attendance variability and peak‑time clustering.
These systems sit within a broader, powerful cultural context:
In short: teaching practice has evolved, but the governance, incentives, and cultural assumptions surrounding space have not. And as long as those systems remain unchanged, space use metrics are unlikely to budge.
These behaviours matter because they do not simply affect day-to-day room use; they also shape the assumptions that feed into planning, benchmarking, and estate investment decisions.
Cultural behaviours have consequences that extend far beyond the day-to-day management of rooms. They influence how institutions estimate demand, plan future provision, justify capital investment, and assess performance against sector benchmarks. In effect, the same behaviours that shape room booking decisions also shape the assumptions underpinning estate planning. One of the clearest manifestations of this is the persistent tendency to overestimate space requirements
The Persistent Overestimation Problem
The Space Management Group (2006) noted that over the years several bodies had proposed planning benchmarks: 50% utilisation from the NAO (1996), 35% from the Dearing Report (1997), and HEFCE 2000/04 thresholds of ≥35% for good performance, 25–35% for fair performance, and ≤25% for poor performance. The earlier PCFC planning norm of 64% is now largely historic, theoretical, and outdated. Actual measured utilisation usually sits well below these levels.
Cultural issues reinforce and exacerbate lower than targeted utilisation. Sector evidence repeatedly shows a large, systematic gap between planned and actual use of teaching space. The SMG 2006 report suggested that 18% of booked activities never took place and group sizes were 27% overprovided. Utilisation surveys still demonstrate that this practice has not reversed.
The causes are frequently linked to:
1. Conflicting Interests and Risk Aversion
2. Resistance to Change and Tradition
3. Perception and Experience Gaps
4. Lack of Incentives and Accountability
5. Siloed Decision-Making and Poor Communication
Although overestimation of space need may be seen as good housekeeping, this combined with other factors such as:
Result in a shortfall that has been described as “significant” and “systemic across the sector.”
AUDE’s Estates Management Report continues to highlight chronic under use of teaching rooms despite estate expansion. HESA’s Estates Management Record consistently shows occupancy well below institutional targets.
Across these datasets, a clear pattern emerges: Universities structurally overestimate how much teaching space they need.
This is driven by:
While some buffer is a rational form of risk management, the scale of the utilisation gap indicates entrenched inefficiency, inefficiency that could be reduced through:
If Metrics are not the Problem… Space Provision Might Be
This is not a call to overhaul utilisation metrics. Frequency, seat occupancy, and combined utilisation are still useful, comparable, and a meaningful measure.
The real question is: What if universities changed how space is provided, not how it is measured?
The challenge, therefore, is to identify changes that alter behaviour without abandoning the established metrics that allow institutions to benchmark performance over time. The following scenarios are not alternative measurement systems; they are alternative approaches to provision that could encourage more efficient use of existing space. Here we can posit three scenarios, compatible with existing metrics, that could fundamentally shift behaviour.
Scenario 1: Move from Ownership to “Curated Pools” of Space
Instead of departments holding long-term allocations (often mismatched to real usage), universities could maintain:
Access would be based on pedagogy and demand, not history.
This reduces hoarding, improves matching between activity and room type, and supports more responsive scheduling—without compromising specialist integrity.
Scenario 2: Stop Booking Rooms. Start Booking Teaching Modes
Rather than academics choosing a specific room, they choose a teaching mode, such as:
Each mode maps to a corresponding space type, and the timetabling system can then be configured to assign the actual room automatically, based on suitability and utilisation targets.
This shifts the question from: “What room do we want?” to “What learning experience are we delivering?”
It also tackles one of the most common sources of inefficiency: seminars in 60+ seat lecture theatres and other “wrong room” mismatches.
The first two scenarios focus on improving how space is allocated and matched to teaching activity. However, even perfectly matched space can remain underutilised if demand remains concentrated into a small number of highly popular timeslots. The final challenge is therefore temporal rather than spatial.
Scenario 3: Smooth the Peak—With Incentives, Not Mandates
Peak time congestion creates an illusion of scarcity. Universities may hit 90–100% utilisation in some spaces at peak, even when the weekly average is substantially lower.
Mandating 8AM or 6PM classes is deeply unpopular and rarely sustainable. EventMAP’s experience also shows that these timeslots are very poorly supported. Wednesday afternoons are also generally seen as a time reserved for other non-teaching activities, which constrains the timetable further. Universities could instead introduce positive incentives for teaching in less popular slots, such as:
The metrics stay the same—but the structural bottleneck is eased.
Taken together, these examples point to a common theme. The sector's utilisation challenge is not primarily a measurement problem, nor even a pedagogical problem. It is a behavioural problem embedded within systems of ownership, scheduling, forecasting, and incentive structures. That helps explain why major changes in teaching practice have produced comparatively little change in measured space use.
So Why Hasn’t Utilisation Improved?
The reason is that changing teaching does not automatically change the cultural practices that govern how space is allotted.
The way universities allocate, book, and schedule space creates a cultural architecture that is far more resistant to change than pedagogy itself. Combine this with structurally conservative planning assumptions, and the result is predictable - Space use today looks remarkably like it did a decade ago, despite a revolution in teaching delivery.
What Will Finally Shift the Dial?
Real improvement won’t come from new metrics, new dashboards, or more space charging models. It will come from redesigning the cultural and structural foundations of space provision:
If universities can realign these cultural systems with how people teach and learn today, they can finally achieve the utilisation gains that have eluded the sector for years.
Combined with a programme of regular monitoring of space utilisation, and benchmarking it against sector standards, universities could begin to see meaningful movement in the next decade by improving space efficiency, enhancing the staff and student experience through better estate quality, and reducing both the institution’s operating costs and carbon footprint.
