The financialised university in the neoliberal city?

A comparative study of university real estate investment strategies in Edinburgh and Manchester, UK:

In recent decades, UK universities have emerged as major
players in urban 'development' and the regeneration of their
city-regions. In light of their increasingly instrumentalist role with
respect to urban economic growth and the intense pressure to
augment rank, reputation and enrolment in a highly competitive
higher education sector, universities are investing billions of
pounds into their campuses. Whilst extensive scholarly work
has been undertaken to conceptualise universities' wider
contributions to their cities, a dearth of work exists which
explains and critiques the growth of financialised real estate
development strategies and their implications vis-à-vis urban
development and governance. In response, this project utilises
a comparative geographical political economy approach to
examine how far, and in what ways, the Universities of
Edinburgh and Manchester are engaged in increasingly
entrepreneurial, speculative and financialised forms of real
estate development, and how they are implicated in the
(re)making of their cities' economic geographies and urban
form. Drawing on archival, qualitative and quantitative data, the
study seeks to explain how both universities' development
strategies have evolved over time in different sub-national and
city-regional contexts, and how their transformation is coupled
with the marketisation of higher education more broadly.
Through assessing multiple case studies of university
development in each city, the project provides a critical
understanding of how different stakeholders conceptualise,
negotiate and contest the role of both universities in
financialised urban development. Ultimately, it considers how
we can construct more inclusive, deliberative and sustainable
approaches to university development that present enduring
benefits for urban communities.