The Economic Impact
A University is defined as an academic institution that offers higher education and also imparts provisions for teaching, research-oriented academics and can legally sanction academic degree certificates (Kouatli 2018). Numerous disciplines can be studied at this University. Generally, a student can pursue both his undergraduate as well as post-graduate degrees from the same University. Some famous examples are the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, University of London to name just a few.
When a company achieves higher goals, the people who affect this process or get affected by such achievement are known as stakeholders. Without the cooperation of the stakeholders or the shareholders, the entire company will refrain from existing. The specific stakeholders in a University are students, employees, researchers who are genuinely interested in the success and welfare of the University. These stakeholders want to positively impact the minds of the students as well as their jobs are also affected by the success of the University (Olander, 2007). Stakeholders like the city councilors and the state representatives are also interested since the voters may base their decisions on the way such officials support the University (Leal Filho and Brandli 2016).
This report mainly analyses the impacts of establishing a University in a large city. The impacts discussed are economic which entails the job opportunities from the construction of a University and the costs involved and also the revenue that is generated, environmental impacts which talk about the carbon footprint and the loss to the environment which happens as a result of construction, and finally, the social impacts which deal with the migration of students and the increase in the educational opportunities and also the health and safety measures of the site workers. The concluding section discusses briefly some recommendations which are relevant for the study.
The economic activities are sustained in a city depending largely on the construction sector. The construction of buildings, in this case, Universities, have always opened up job opportunities for a large sector of people who holds up the building sector likely the project management, property services, landholdings, and organization. Not only these sectors but there are a heap of other sectors which receive job opportunities as well as a result of University construction namely – the sectors which supply the raw materials like timber, sawmills, forests and quarries local to the area, glass and steel makers, manufacturers producing concrete products and metal producers, plastic producers, the industries which import materials which are not available in the local market, the industries which serve as transportation for these imports, architect industries planning the exterior and the interior of the University, the contractors, the financers, real estate agents, building inspectors, brokers. After construction, the employment of teaching and non-teaching staff, public servants are such examples (Weller, 2017).
The Environmental Impact
There are colossal amount of costs involved in constructing a University. These costs involve the overhead costs and profits which together combine to form the fees of the contractor, the fees of the architecture, the entire cost of the building, the hard costs which include costs of the building site, equipment costs, and life safety systems, paving costs to name just a few. Other costs include purchasing raw materials like timber for the construction of doors and windows, importing the same, transportation costs. These are a few costs before the construction but after the construction, there are maintenance costs, electricity costs, remuneration for the professors, and much more (Ashworth and Perera 2015).
The main option for Universities to generate revenue is through enrolments of students. Students form the largest part of the University who pay tuition fees to the University and this forms the major part of the revenue generated by the University. There are other forms of revenue generation also by the University likely aids from the government like student grants or scholarships, receiving grants for research, or any pre-contracts for the goods and services. Universities may also receive endowments from public and private figures (Lake, 2021).
When an entire University is being constructed in an area, be it urban or local, the environment gets affected adversely. There is a huge amount of carbon dioxide that gets released into the atmosphere due to the construction of the building, resulting in what is popularly known as ‘carbon footprint’. It is the entire amount of greenhouse gas that gets emitted as a by-product of the construction that takes place. As a result, the environment gets more and more polluted due to such humane activities (Berners-Lee 2020). Recently, the Universities which are being constructed are developing the usage of the latest technology where there is supposedly a zero-emission target. This is truly a challenge, in reality, to make society and thereby the entire world a carbon-neutral one. For example, in Europe, most of the Universities which claim to be carbon neutral are detected to be in Great Britain (Helmers, Chang, and Dauwels, 2021).
The 21st century is concerned about the environment much more than its ancestors have witnessed. It is an eco-friendly century that is worried about the environment. The main causes for environmental harm include the burning of fossil fuel, utilization of non-renewable resources, and mostly the emission of gases which are known as greenhouse gases. The industry which contributes the maximum to these causes of environmental harm is the construction industry. In a recent study, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has put forward that approximately 25-40% of the consumption of energy originates from the construction sectors. To curb this rate, the approach towards construction needs to be sustainable. These newly acquired approaches which are sustainable in nature demand an integrated system approach where the materials used can be reused again, there is the existence of eco-friendly integration and there is the consumption of renewable energy. These sustainable approaches highly demand professionals who possess the required knowledge for sustainable construction. Developed countries do make minor mistakes and these pose themselves as opportunities for the developing countries to build capacity, especially to construct buildings with integrated approaches to arrive at a sustainable result (Hayles and Kooloos, 2008).
The Social Impact
Any construction work involves an enormous amount of loss to the environment which can never be quantified. These losses include removal of vegetation leaving the fertile land barren, generation of dust, air pollution, noise pollution, health-related issues of the labor – respiratory problems, loss of hearing, agitation, high blood pressure, disturbed sleep cycle, cancer, and other cardiovascular issues (Enshassi, Kochendoerfer, and Rizq, 2014).
Any construction of a building in an area generally alters the demographic pattern of that area. In this report, the construction is regarding the construction of the University. If a University is constructed in an area, it will naturally attract the young population. Students who are not local to the area will migrate to the city to minimize the traveling expenses. This will increase the young population. Moreover, the construction of the University will lead to an increasing cluster of labor from the neighborhood regions who will migrate to this region for the construction of the building. A construction process requires a huge amount of labor that cannot be found in only one area. Hence, the labor required (skilled and unskilled), will have to migrate and stay in the area where the building is being constructed. Finally, the proportion of women who will get recruited in the construction process will naturally rise thereby reducing gender inequality. In this report, it is a construction of a University that will employ boys and girls in the same ratio, again reducing the gender gap that is existing for generations (BSRIA, 2021).
As more and more Universities get constructed, the academic atmosphere rises the stairs. The construction of new Universities would in turn result in imparting more education. The number of students receiving higher education would increase. The student enrolment will also rise. Some students do not receive higher education, especially in rural areas due to many reasons – less number of higher educational institutions, more responsibilities on a female student are just a few of them. An increase in the number of Universities would resolve this issue. The students will now get access to higher education after completing their bachelor’s degree.
The construction of a University has numerous health and safety issues for the workers. Some of these are – falling from a height, getting hit by an object, electrocution, exorbitant loud noise causing eyesight problems, respiratory problems due to airborne toxic fibers, damage of the liver, high blood pressure, cancer, agitation, disturbed sleep cycle, lung damage by inhaling wood dusts are just a few of them (Zhang, Shi and Yang 2020).
Recommendations
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that constructing a University is a Herculean task. The impacts generated are huge and can be categorized into three parts namely the economic impacts, the environmental impacts, and the social impacts. The economic impacts revolve around the exorbitant amount of costs involved in constructing the University but on the other hand, the employment which gets generated for many people serves as their daily livelihood and thereby increases their standard of living too. The environment also gets adversely affected by such construction which means felling down of trees over a huge span of area and release of harmful chemicals in the atmosphere and by the nearby water body too. The impacts fall upon the health of the workers too by affecting their health but on the other hand, they earn their livelihood from such activities. Despite these adverse impacts, Universities nonetheless provide education to millions of students who educate themselves from such institutions and make the world a better place to live in. The major benefit of education is that it spreads awareness and lowers the crime rate. Education also provides a healthy lifestyle for the students in the long run and increases the productivity of the Nation.
Based on the study, there are some suggestions which can be made:
- Sustainability: The Universities constructed to cause a lot of harm to the environment, hence they can be made sustainable. In simple words, there could be more of construction of Universities which follow the latest technology and minimize the emission of harmful chemicals in the environment. The scientists can research for more sustainable methods which can be incorporated. The University can also employ engineers who promise to practice sustainably. Hence, the University can equip itself sustainably from every perspective. Sustainable education imparted would imply impartment of knowledge to the present generation without compromising the future generation.
- Challenges for Developing Nations: For developing countries, there are a lot of challenges which the country has to face, especially in the construction sector, where there is huge finance required. The challenges involved are a collection of statistics and arranging them accordingly, lack of research by scientists for sustainable methods, lack of interests of the stakeholders in building the University sustainably, lack of ability of the construction sector, lack of skilled labor, an unsettled economic environment, dearth of updated technology, low rate of investment, high scale of poverty are just a few of them. The developing countries need to overcome these challenges to mitigate the gap with the developed countries.
- Minimize Health Hazards: The health hazards for the workers are quite high in the construction sites. They suffer from a lot of health problems already discussed in the paper and therefore can contribute less to the production which thereby decreases the GDP of the nation. The University stakeholders can provide health coverage for its workers like rehabilitation and therapy, promotion of health, prevention. The intervention can be to minimize the noise pollution, using eco-friendly resources rather than harmful ones, confinement of the sources of In this way, the workers can achieve good health and thereby increase productivity (workers’ health, 2017).
- Limiting Environmental Hazards: The environment suffers a lot due to man-made constructions. The constructions require the usage of fossil fuels which emit an enormous amount of harmful gases. This needs to be reduced by using alternative fuel sources or eco-friendly ones. The construction sites can also dispose of the wastage generated in a proper manner instead of just dumping the garbage into a landfill or releasing the chemicals in the nearby water body which disrupts the ecology of the aqua body too (Environmental Impact, 2021).
References
BSRIA, 2021. Demographics – how a changing population is transforming the built environment. [online] Designingbuildings.co.uk. Available at:
<https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Demographics_-_how_a_changing_population_is_transforming_the_built_environment> [Accessed 8 February 2022].
Enshassi, A., Kochendoerfer, B. and Rizq, E., 2014. An evaluation of environmental impacts of construction projects. [online]
https://www.ricuc.cl/.
Available at:
<https://www.ricuc.cl/index.php/ric/article/view/560/html_1#:~:text=Construction%20sector%20is%20considered%20as,environmental%20pollution%20in%20the%20world.&text=The%20results%20of%20this%20study,environmental%20impacts%20of%20construction%20projects.> [Accessed 8 February 2022].
Environmental Impact, 2021. How to Decrease the Environmental Impact of Construction | HSI Services. [online] HSI Services Inc. Available at:
<https://aquabarrier.com/blog/information/decrease-environmental-impact-construction/> [Accessed 9 February 2022].
Hayles, C. and Kooloos, T., 2008. The challenges and opportunities for sustainable building practices. Research Gate, [online] Available at:
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228350441_The_challenges_and_opportunities_for_sustainable_building_practices> [Accessed 8 February 2022].
Helmers, E., Chang, C. and Dauwels, J., 2021. Carbon footprinting of universities worldwide: Part I—objective comparison by standardized metrics. Environmental Sciences Europe, [online] 33(1). Available at:
<https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-021-00454-6> [Accessed 8 February 2022].
Lake, R., 2021. How Colleges Make Money. [online] Investopedia. Available at:
<https://www.investopedia.com/how-colleges-make-money-5199835> [Accessed 9 February 2022].
Olander, S., 2007. Stakeholder impact analysis in construction project management. Construction Management and Economics, [online] 25(3), pp.277-287. Available at:
<https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1080/01446190600879125> [Accessed 8 February 2022].
Weller, S., 2017. The hollow promise of construction-led jobs and growth. [online] The Conversation. Available at: <https://theconversation.com/the-hollow-promise-of-construction-led-jobs-and-growth-82317> [Accessed 9 February 2022].
workers’ health, 2017. Protecting workers’ health. [online] Who.int. Available at:
<https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/protecting-workers’-health> [Accessed 9 February 2022].
Kouatli, I., 2018. The contemporary definition of university social responsibility with quantifiable sustainability. Social responsibility journal.
Leal Filho, W. and Brandli, L. eds., 2016. Engaging stakeholders in education for sustainable development at university level. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Ashworth, A. and Perera, S., 2015. Cost studies of buildings. Routledge.
Berners-Lee, M., 2020. How bad are bananas?: the carbon footprint of everything. Profile Books.
Zhang, M., Shi, R. and Yang, Z., 2020. A critical review of vision-based occupational health and safety monitoring of construction site workers. Safety science, 126, p.104658.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
