Raymond da Silva Rosa: World’s universities have always had an edifice complex

Perhaps the most counter-intuitive revelation in a recent Wall Street Journal report on the University of Chicago is not that an institution that claims 34 Nobel Laureates in Economics has run a deficit for 14 years straight, including a shortfall of US$244 million ($376.8 million) in 2024, but rather that it entered into financial jeopardy by constructing snazzy new buildings in an effort to increase its attractiveness to students.

To make the same point differently: a 135-year-old university where its academics have won a total of 101 Nobel prizes — that is a Nobel every 1.33 years on average since 1890 — aimed to lift its appeal to the best and brightest not via, say, a campaign highlighting its world-changing intellectual contributions and stellar academics, but by spending on new bui