Flex Infrastructures for Public Higher Education Institutions

[Joe]

In higher education to respond to changes in job demand and the popularity of certain majors, what typically happens is there is a fund raising effort, a new building goes up with the donor's name on it, they increase faculty and the number of students they can serve and it opens.
The only problem is, by the time all this is done, 7-10 years go by before the first larger senior class graduates. By then, often, the demand has been met and the opportunity has declined.
I think if the were to make all new architecture - particularly for the sciences - flexible i.e.: plumbing, power, waste disposal, labs, would all containing the majority of what each discipline requires.
Just change the scale of the buildings, rather than building new, discipline-specific custom buildings, only to see student demand wane and need arise in another area, that is too small.
They could move equipment from building to building and respond years quicker to changes in the demands of the labor market.