The fifth time proved the charm. In late 2004 university regents approved plans to plow up their creaky nine-holer and replace it with a full-scale John Harbottle-designed 18. Plenty of challenges remain, including raising the balance of an $8.5 million construction fund for the course and then $4 million more for a clubhouse, not to mention actually digging in the dirt to make 18 holes. But if all goes well, by late 2007 or early 2008 students at WSU will move from the forlorn ranks of Students without Courses to those who can brag about 18 sweet holes just off campus.

That list has grown noticeably in the past 15 years, a period that represents the third major cycle of university-affiliated course construction in the United States. The first, in the 1920s and 1930s, established classic layouts at institutions like Ohio State, Stanford, Williams and Yale. The second cycle belongs to the 1950s and 1960s, when new golf venues were established at the Air Force Academy, Colgate, Duke (completing a two-year upgrade program this spring) and the University of New Mexico, among others.

This latest wave was sparked by bellwether projects at Arizona State (Karsten GC, opened in 1989) and Wisconsin (University Ridge, 1991). These were go-go years for course-building in general, and for the university segment they rolled on into the 21st century, when such notable new courses as Purdue’s (Kampen Course, 1998), Kansas State’s (Colbert Hills, 2000) and Texas Tech’s (Rawls Course, 2003) opened with the pomp and circumstance one finds only at institutes of higher education.

Although definitive numbers are elusive, estimates put the tally of university-affiliated courses in the U.S. between 150 and 200. That includes everything from layouts owned and operated by a college to affiliated courses and nearby clubs where golf teams enjoy full access and conduct tournaments.

If you hadn’t noticed, higher education has morphed from a scholarly vocation to a luxury consumer purchase. Competition for standout students has led to rock-climbing walls in the quadrangle and grinning administrators handing out iPods to every freshman in the registration line. Against this economic and cultural backdrop, golf has emerged as a unique and compelling (old-line educators will shudder at the word) amenity. Rock-climbing is a niche activity and electronics become obsolete, but the networking and par-shooting skills honed on a golf course can serve a graduate oh-so-well in the Fortune 500 career he or she anticipates. “It all depends on your interests,” says Mitch Warren, associate director of admissions at Purdue. Warren meets plenty of sought-after high school seniors for whom the drama program or the school newspaper will become all-consuming activities. “But the ones who love golf,” he affirms, “see our new course and start to salivate.”

Baby Boom demographics exert a twofold impetus on the new-course-on-campus movement. Post-war Americans who raised all these children and acclimated them to prosperity turned higher education into a growth industry with its own mass-market economy. Later, as they’ve aged, well-off Boomer parents have targeted college towns as retirement sites and boosted the concept of the college or university as a magnet for year-round, life-enriching experiences to be enjoyed not just by active students but by residents of all ages.

Universities “need to think of [themselves] as destination points, then they really can become great places,” says Tim Liddy, who teamed with Pete Dye on Purdue’s Kampen Course. “Working on a college golf project is a lot like a municipal work,” Liddy adds. “There are always a lot of audiences you have to deal with. Everyone has good intentions but everybody has different priorities they want to see for the land.”

Purdue has added several high-profile academic structures in recent years: an African-American and Latino cultural center, a school of management, a renovated agricultural school and labs for the college of engineering. Similar to those projects, Purdue’s golf course did not loom into view until alumni who thought highly of the idea dug into their pockets for several million dollars in funding.

That’s hurdle No. 1 for university courses, and one reason a place like Wisconsin, even with its loyal alumni and high profile, took decades to see its project through to completion. In the late 1980s, UW was one of only two Big Ten Conference members without a course. The other was Northwestern, an urban campus with not even the space for new horseshoe pits.

“This course had been talked about for 40 to 50 years,” says Mike Urben, general manager at UW’s University Ridge. The first cash contribution for a U. of Wisconsin golf course to be built somewhere in greater Madison arrived decades ago, but planners struggled for years with a standard obstacle: Large land tracts no longer available on school grounds and the price of adjacent land so high as to make the entire project cost-prohibitive. Then Midwestern idealism and the university’s 501(c)(3) status worked their magic. “Two farmers said they would donate the land,” Urben explains. Trustees jumped at the offer of 225 acres some eight miles southwest of Madison, bringing in Robert Trent Jones Jr. and Bruce Charlton as architects under the direction of the UW Foundation.

The resulting course became a treasured university asset the day it opened in July 1991. University Ridge’s first nine roams across open farmland before yielding to a second nine carved through heavily wooded acreage. It was easily worth a big-ticket green fee, but instead was priced at an unbeatable value of $15 for students and $25 for the public. At that time rounds of golf at Blackwolf Run, the best course in the state and a future U.S. Women’s Open site, were going for $62 a pop.

Such math hints at the complicated formulas that come into play when universities set about building golf courses. Raising enough money to build eliminates the need to float loans that otherwise would drive up a green fee. But the fundraising process can be a drawn-out affair—or, with great luck, a matter of one person writing one mighty big check.

That indeed was the case at Texas Tech, where the donations of alumnus Jerry Rawls helped turn more than 250 acres of flat farmland formerly used by agricultural students into a rolling Tom Doak design that opened in 2003. “By donating the construction costs Mr. Rawls guaranteed that it would be an affordable course, not just for students but for everybody in Lubbock,” says Doak, whose layout costs students $25 per round to play. “Not many golf courses can write off $8 million in construction costs.”

Money flowed freely into universities during the early 1990s as equity markets sizzled and the economy boomed. With cash in hand and land procured, projects came face-to-face with hurdle No. 3: approval from a steering committee or board of regents. That could take years, especially when opponents are vocal and well-organized.

Washington State proponents had plenty of opposition to their first four efforts to establish an 18-hole layout. “A lot of academics view golf as an elitist sport, especially at a university that is agriculturally oriented,” says Washington State’s Taylor. “We turned it into an opportunity for agricultural field work, to study water usage and conduct turf research.”

The opportunities went far beyond the Cougar student body. Pullman typifies a college town that draws empty-nesters looking to relocate: small residential population (about 10,000), artistic and cultural activities at the university and the hum of 20,000 students at work and play. The fact that the nearest 18-hole course was more than 30 minutes away was one of the few drawbacks to Pullman-bound retirees.

As Taylor recalls it, an economic-development plan prepared to support the proposal measured certain supply-demand factors both within and beyond Pullman’s boundaries. Any new resident drawn to the community in part by the presence of the course would strengthen the local tax base, already overwhelmingly dependent on the university. And in a nod to existing residents, the course’s master plan satisfied “open space” proponents by establishing buffers and dealing with sensitive areas.

“We talked about this course and its value far beyond what it meant to the university—as being something to benefit the region,” Taylor says. Consequently the university’s regents approved the project to great fanfare.

While this latest cycle ofcollege course development has featured several notable new courses, it has seen its fair number of reworked courses, too. Duke, Florida, Michigan, Michigan State and North Carolina, to name a few, transformed layouts that were groaning under the weight of steady play or required enhancements to keep up with an ever-developing sport.

When UNC’s Finley Golf Course made its debut in 1949, the George Cobb design was one of few courses to be found between Raleigh and Greensboro, explains Johnny Cake, the director of golf. “Now there are 60 to 70. It’s a far more competitive situation.”

Tom Fazio’s 1999 reworking was far-reaching, leaving no green or fairway unturned and beefing up the top yardage from about 6,600 yards to nearly 7,100. The $9.5 million project was completely funded by private donations, Cake says, noting one little-mentioned reason for needing up-front money: “We don’t have a membership out here to whom we could turn and say the ‘A’ word: Assessment.”

From an operating standpoint, college courses follow a business plan that might prove suicidal for the daily-fee down the street. The core clientele of students is given the lowest price on the board, which diminishes revenue. Of course, low is a subjective term. The fee at Stanford, one of the most prized collegiate layouts? “A student pays $20 a round,” deadpans director of golf Don Chelemedos, “plus $40,000 a year in tuition.”

Each semester more than 1,000 students take golf to help fulfill their physical education requirements, Chelemedos says. Student play accounts for 22 percent of the 65,000 annual rounds, while faculty and staff add 15 percent. But it is the play by a roster of 350 individual members and their guests who account for 50 percent of revenue, he says. That activity throws off dollars.

“Our golf course is the second-largest revenue producer for the athletic department, right behind the football program,” Chelemedos says. “We receive no funding and in fact we provide a great deal of money.” He declines to cite a specific amount, but describes it as “substantial.”

That is the most compelling reason so many university people worked so hard during the last 15 years to make their golf-course plans a reality. College-related golf construction practically disappeared between each of the first three cycles, meaning the business model had to be reinvented and resold, reflective of the altered economic environment each time. The institutions that made it happen were long on patience, to be certain.

“I’m sure it would have come up again,” Taylor says of Washington State’s proposal. “But it would have been years, long after everyone here was gone.”