I would agree that at least some lawn on many college campuses should be desirable, but with modifications to its care to be more environmentally sustainable. Certainly, you'd want some area for casual sports, etc. My own college, however, didn't have much in the way of these great swaths of lawn, so there are definitely better ways of creating outdoor spaces for studying meeting. My own campus had several landscaped outdoor patio areas with lots of seating that always got way more traffic and interaction than any of our lawn areas and were really much more practical for things like studying or meeting for lunch in addition to requiring less water, etc. This is probably a much better model for campuses in desert areas.