Analysis of the Use of PPPs in Higher Education Institutions through Systematic Literature Review

Public private partnerships (PPPs) have spread from their typical use on infrastructure projects such as roadways and water sanitation to their more recent use for projects in higher education institutions such as universities and colleges. These PPP projects have diverse attributes depending on the type of project, institutional culture, and structure of ownership and management. Based on these key aspects, the projects can either be successful or unsuccessful depending on economic and financial measures. This paper investigates the use of PPPs for the delivery of higher education institutions and finds trends of PPP usage in the United States. This is performed by first collecting records of PPP projects in educational institutions by applying the systematic literature review (SLR) methodology. The result of the SLR methodology is a collection of U.S.-based higher education PPP projects and a classification of project types and where they are located. The results at this stage show that PPP projects have been used the most in the South and Northeast as compared to other geographic locations in the U.S. majority of the projects were student housing complexes for the universities and there has been a trend for expansion to other areas such as utilities, parking garages, and health centers. The results also show an increasing trend in project sizes between 1994 and 2017. This paper provides a detailed review of the use of PPPs in higher education institutions with a focus on how SLR was conducted and the identified trends. It was noticed that PPP was not only used by public universities, but also spread to private universities. The results of this paper are expected to shed light on the increased PPP usage in the educational sector in the U.S.