Academic works in progress are double-spaced to facilitate editing. When the manuscript is complete, it is typeset (as a journal article, monograph, book, etc.) with single spacing.
Why then are dissertations double-spaced? They are finished and will not be edited again.
Over 60,000 dissertations a year (using a sample from 2000-2004 at ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Both PhD and Masters?) are filed. If we assume that each dissertation is printed five times, averages 100 pages and that single spacing would cut those pages by 40%, we would save 24,000 reams of paper (12,000,000 pages, or half that is we have double-sided printing) without reducing academic output at all.
In fact -- if there is no good reason for double-spacing -- even one university can reduce waste with a single-spacing protocol.
I spoke with a representative at UMI about their "spacing policy ". (UMI collects and distributes dissertations from many unversities.) The rep said that although their "formatting guidelines" say double-spacing, they will accept anything universities see fit to approve. The overall guideline, she said, was readability. Since almost anything published these days is single-spaced, I would guess double-spacing contradicts that guideline.
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Well, I doubt that double spacing contradicts their guideline, as it is no harder to read. However, I suspect that the mechanism at work here is simply the inertia of tradition. As you present it, it certainly seems like a good idea.
Let's not print them at all.
I suggest something less extreme, at least as a first step: line-and-a-half spacing.
And how about allowing double-sided printing? Computerization and the increasing use of double-sided printers should make this OK. (Because the type isn't hammered into the page the way it was with a typewriter, there wouldn't be an unattractive push-through effect from the other side.) The other side wouldn't show through as long as heavy-weight paper were employed.