Minimum Land Use requirement of Educational Institutions

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Over the past five decades human population has increased hugely to touch a near seven billion now. As a consequence, there is a huge pressure on both urban and rural lands accessible by basic infrastructure such as roads, electricity and water. Humans are devising ways to manage with less and less land for their life and activities. The pressure is also influencing educational institutions that have to do with reduced land availability. Nevertheless, certain minimum requirements still exist for land for different types of educational institutions ranging from kindergarten to university. This author has written about such land requirement before for separate type of educational institutions. The present note summarizes all these findings in a single comprehensive table.

An affiliated college is one that prepares students for a university level examination but does not have authority to grant university degrees on its own for which it affiliates itself to a university. A residential institution is one that has housing for some or all of the students, teachers, faculty and staff. A non-residential institution makes use of residential facilities of nearby town or city. If it is not well connected, nearby and does not have a good environment, the educational quality of such institution suffers because a person not living well can neither provide nor receive good education. When it comes to a universities in particular, if it is not residential, it shall not have international students and the minds of students and faculty of such universities will not develop as it can with a cultural exchange across nations. The first university of the world - Nalanda University was a fully residential one and had students from as far away as Greece and Japan. It made a major contribution to the development of human civilization.

The requirements mentioned in the table are minimum requirements and there are high schools that operate from hundred acres or more and universities that possess several thousand acres of land including the one this author received his doctorate from. On the other hand there are educational institutions that operate with even less than the land use suggested as minimum here. These compromise their quality of education delivered from this issue of land alone.

An interesting observation is that land use requirements for a high school or an affiliated college of a non-professional nature are similar. However it must be mentioned that the educational experience in an affiliated college is only an abbreviated version of that in a university directly and is therefore a compromise used because of financial constraints. Countries that use a smaller proportion of this affiliated compromise of higher education end up with better quality of educated citizens. When a single university affiliates a huge number of colleges say more than ten, especially those situated at more than a few hours of travel distance form the university,  , the quality worsens further.





Refer to the following note on precise dimensions for school land use
http://fromschooltouniversity.blogspot.in/2016/05/improving-lives-of-school-children-iii.html

Refer to following for a discussion and distribution of land use in a university
http://www.amazon.com/create-Excellent-Universities-Ashok-Malhotra/dp/1479108561

Comments

Ashok said…
Some errors in the original posted table were corrected and re-posted.
May 8, 2016 at 3:57 AM
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