At my university which is also a heavily endowed top ten, and it's hard to not imagine that they were intentionally aiming to waste money. In my opinion the purpose of this was to justify increasing costs which internally is then seen as a measurement of growth. You would regularly see buildings, fully functional and usable buildings, being completely demolished and replaced with new buildings to no end. The only real changes would be snazzier looking architecture and some nicer desks because, ya know, you have to tear down a building to stick in some nicer desks.
What I think people forget when we speak of monolithic institutions, be they institutions of learning, corporations, or even governments is that they aren't really monoliths. They're just made up of lots of individuals who are mostly just interested in themselves. So who is the person whose motivation is to reduce costs? Go look at the regularly flaunted bios and list of achievements of presidents of any major university. You're not going to find reducing costs anywhere in there. Instead you'll just find a whole slew of different ways they managed to find to spend even more money.
Here [1] is the president of Stanford's bio. Lo and behold, among his amazing achievements include 'Dr. Tessier-Lavigne worked with faculty, students, staff and trustees to develop and execute a ... a $500 million / 2 acre campus expansion project in the heart of Manhattan that broke ground in 2015.' Literally managing to spend half a billion dollars of other peoples money for a 2 acre expansion is, in and of itself, regarded as a noteworthy achievement.
What I think people forget when we speak of monolithic institutions, be they institutions of learning, corporations, or even governments is that they aren't really monoliths. They're just made up of lots of individuals who are mostly just interested in themselves. So who is the person whose motivation is to reduce costs? Go look at the regularly flaunted bios and list of achievements of presidents of any major university. You're not going to find reducing costs anywhere in there. Instead you'll just find a whole slew of different ways they managed to find to spend even more money.
Here [1] is the president of Stanford's bio. Lo and behold, among his amazing achievements include 'Dr. Tessier-Lavigne worked with faculty, students, staff and trustees to develop and execute a ... a $500 million / 2 acre campus expansion project in the heart of Manhattan that broke ground in 2015.' Literally managing to spend half a billion dollars of other peoples money for a 2 acre expansion is, in and of itself, regarded as a noteworthy achievement.
[1] - https://president.stanford.edu/biography/