Many schools and universities thought they were getting a good deal when they were building education facilities in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the K-12 and higher-education spaces constructed to accommodate the millions of baby-boomer students no longer look like the quick-fix bargain they did years ago. Low-quality materials and construction, inefficient energy systems and uninspiring designs have left many schools and universities with facilities that are deteriorating and saddled with high maintenance and repair costs. Today's architects and administrators have tried to learn from the errors of their predecessors and are striving to be smarter about how they plan and build education facilities. Rather than focus only on the initial construction cost of a project, designers and educators are placing greater emphasis on how much a facility will cost over its entire life. By using life-cycle costing, education institutions can have solid data to show that in some cases, spending a little more at an early stage can lead to savings over the life of a building. The basic premise of life-cycle costing is that the costs associated with a building do not end when the construction is complete. To accurately evaluate the entire cost of a facility, one must look at what it costs to build, operate, maintain, and dispose of a facility over its lifespan.