Many colleges have put off repairs and renovation since the recession. Now crumbling buildings, limited budgets, and mounting debt present an increasingly intractable problem. Sightlines, a consulting company that tracks and analyzes facilities issues at more than 300 colleges, shared some of its latest findings with "The Chronicle". The data…

Colleges have always struggled with deferred maintenance, but several factors might make that struggle especially challenging in the future. Colleges grew rapidly in the postwar years and have a generation of 1960s or 1970s buildings that need major repair or replacement. In the past 10 years, colleges went through another building boom, adding to…