Inter-Campus Sharable Potential of Hardware Educational Resources in A University Town: Connotation, Determination Method and A Case Study

Abstract

Sharing educational resources (ERs) among campuses in a university town (UT) could avoid the waste or repeated construction of ERs, which is beneficial to the sustainable utilization of resources. For hardware educational resources (HERs) greatly attached to land resources, whether they have surplus shareable potential is the key factor relating to inter-campus sharing. However, there is a serious lack of definition and quantitative research on HERs’ shareable potential. Based on the correlation between land resource utilization and HER sharing, we firstly defined the connotation of inter-campus sharable potential of HERs (ISPHERs), put forward its calculation method and carried out a case study in Longzi Lake UT of Zhengzhou City, Henan province, China. The results show that: (1) ISPHERs could be defined from the perspective of “the best utilization degree” which mainly depended on the utilization and development gap between the present area value and the possible most intensive one under certain conditions; (2) based on the area quota and the students’ number, the ISPHERs was calculated by the Delphi and multi-factor model methods; (3) the case study in Longzi Lake UT of Zhengzhou City, Henan province, China showed that the comprehensive ISPHERs was high in the south and low in the north, and the libraries and canteens in five colleges and universities mainly providing vocational skills training were insufficient. If all the 11 campuses could freely share HERs, there would be an overall surplus of the five kinds of HER (i.e., classroom, laboratory, library, indoor sports room and canteen). The comprehensive management framework should include sustainable concept guidance, cooperation system construction, planning control, benefit adjustment and technological innovation, etc.