Why do university campuses have glass blowing services? I noticed that my university has a glass blowing service in the same building as the chemistry precinct, supposedly to make the glassware for the chemistry labs. At first I thought this was kind of quirky and I chortled to myself, "man, the chemistry students must break a lot of beakers."

Later I toured a campus overseas and noticed that they too had a glass blower. A quick Google search showed that many institutions have similar facilities. Most of them sell their services too. It seems to be more academically-focused than I first thought; it would be incorrect to equate it with the janitorial service or the on-campus bakery, presumably.

Why glass blowing and not another craft? I'm curious as to what separates glass blowing from other crafts and manual arts that warrants it a dedicated department in an academic facility.
If you make enough use of them, it's cheaper and more efficient to use in-house services. That's why most universities will also have a mechanical workshop, to make one-off items mostly for the physics and engineering departments.


Everything is streamlined: the glassblower is an employee, not a business owner. He can spend more of his time on his products, thus his services are cheaper. The University will also make some profit from selling their services.
It makes things easier for the academic staff, and there's less bother with accounts or purchase orders. For routine jobs (if these things aren't outsourced), just visit the workshop and ask for another 1L boiling flask.
The academic staff know that he will always do a good job: a low turn-over rate means the glassblower(s) develop a strong rapport with their frequent customers, and have a good understanding of their needs. If more jobs are outsourced, this personal touch can be easily lost.


Of course, it seems these days that ordinary items are usually outsourced -- a big factory is more cost effective. It's for the one-off custom items that it still makes a lot of sense to keep things in-house.