[junipertea]

Most universities do not contain sufficient capacity to host both the conference and the overnight stays of thousands of people. Even a major university would face significant disruption by hosting a conference, it is simply not built for it. Building venues at each university doesn’t make sense either because it doesn’t have 100% utilization.

Conference venues provide incentives by having cheap venue rent and minor discount on housing and the city makes money by having more people do fun things in their down time.

Purely from efficiency, disregarding politics or “waste” or “delusion”, conference centers are built for a very rational reason - it makes sense and saves money for event organizers.