“You’re looking at the ‘before,’” said Brian Swanson, the assistant vice president for university services, finance, and strategy.

The university says it needs $3.7 billion system-wide over the next decade for further repairs and renovations to buildings like this one. It asked the state legislature this year for permission to issue $236 million worth of bonds, of which $100 million was for critical improvements. It got nothing.

After years of budget cuts and continuing austerity, universities and colleges collectively face a shortfall of a record $30 billion for what they variously call “deferred maintenance” or “deferred renewal” to deteriorating buildings and other infrastructure, according to an estimate by the national association representing facilities officers.

The problem is compounded by the fact that they nonetheless continue to build more—spending a record $11.5 billion last year—in the hope of attracting students at a time when enrollment is leveling off or falling. That’s further straining maintenance resources and adding billions of dollars of debt for which someone has to pay the interest.

All of this complicates even the most innovative attempts to reduce the price of college. Along with pension liabilities and the bill for health-care they provide for their retired employees, it means colleges and universities face even higher, not lower, costs to do business.

“It’s an endless game of chasing your tail,” Swanson said. “Every year we lose ground and costs increase. And if we don’t get the money from the legislature, the only other place we have to get it is tuition.”

Some universities are already adding “capital renewal fees” to students’ bills to help them pay for renovations and improvements.

The backlog of maintenance has only grown since the economic downturn. It’s up 18 percent since 2007 at private, nonprofit campuses and 22 percent at public universities and colleges, according to Sightlines, a higher-education-facilities consulting firm. Nearly four out of five leaders of community colleges nationwide surveyed by the Education Policy Center at the University of Alabama called money for facilities “a major need.”

“It’s no surprise that since the Great Recession there is now pent-up demand,” said Peter Strazdas, the associate vice president for facilities management at Western Michigan University and board president of APPA, formerly the Association of Physical Plant Administrators.

States are collectively spending 17 percent less on public higher education, when adjusted for inflation, than they did before the downturn, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports. This comes at exactly the time when a huge proportion of campus buildings have reached the point when they need major repairs and renovation. Forty percent were constructed—many of them not particularly well—during an enrollment spike between 1960 and 1975, according to the Sightlines survey.