Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

The construction off campus is a natural next step, given the growth of the University itself—and the reasons behind it—over the past 20 years. John Affleck-Graves, Notre Dame’s executive vice president, presented the numbers below at a May 7, 2008, town hall meeting with faculty and staff, reminding his audience that the goal is to build Notre Dame’s research capacity and attract the most talented scholars while continuing to improve the quality of undergraduate education.

Affleck-Graves said the plan is to keep undergraduate numbers steady around 8,000, while the number of graduate and professional students should level off around 4,000 within the next decade. Noting the pace of construction, he said Notre Dame ranked last among leading private universities in the amount of new construction relative to the size of its building base over the last five years.

“It’s a sobering thought for higher education,” he said. “We do have a lot of construction on campus. But in fact we are building at a slower rate than all of our peers.”