The financialized university A multi-scalar historical analysis of state disinvestment, campus evolution, and the emergence of a new asset class

Over the past half-century, state disinvestment in higher education has fundamentally altered how universities secure funding, govern themselves, and operate — reorienting them toward the market from which they were once shielded. This research argues that physical campus change is a direct result of these pressures, examined through the lens of institutional financialization. The University of Amsterdam and the London School of Economics serve as core case studies across four points in time — 1945, 1980, 2008, and 2023 — with a sampling of American universities as comparative foils.
Three interlocking mechanisms emerge: the pursuit of alternative revenue streams to replace state funding; the prioritization of STEM disciplines for their market adjacency; and campus asset amenitization — repositioning space beyond academic functions to serve recruitment, marketing, and revenue goals. Once embedded, these mechanisms become self-reinforcing, driving institutional lock-in that reshapes not only budgets and buildings but institutional priorities themselves.
Drawing on archival research, semi-structured interviews, spatial mapping, and quantitative analysis, this dissertation combines the vantage points of a historian and social scientist with that of a practitioner in institutional real estate.