I'm not sure what physical space has to do with a boom in education. The long term trend is that economic downturns lead to a boom in higher education. That's just a fact of life.
Schools, right now, are being forced online with all goods and services, which is uncharted territory for most of them. Whether it's old-timey faculty dragging their feet because in-person is better than online (it is, by the way), or because some classes just can't be offered online (without critically thinking about it I would argue), or because we've just done things this way forever. Whatever the reason, higher ed is being forced to think about things in ways it never has before. Institutions are desperately snatching up online resources right now like crazy.
My argument is that when the boom comes in the next six months, all colleges and universities are going to look to build resiliency and responsiveness in certain areas related to critical student facing infrastructure. This means online. This means external services.
We're big, we're slow, we're out of touch with reality, but one thing we don't do, in individual institutions in higher education, is make the same mistake twice. That, at least, we're good at.
None of this has to do with physical space?
