By: Arthur Hall
Submitted: 2010-09-10 21:53:37 | Word Count: 914
A consortium is an association of institutions for the purpose of improved and expanded economic collaboration to achieve mutually beneficial goals. In higher education, this organizational form was originally designed to foster interinstitutional cooperation among a group of colleges and universities for the purpose of enhancing services within a geographic region. More recently, as information and communication technologies have increased the availability of resources for research and development purposes, universities have joined with corporations and government agencies to form national and international consortia.
The parameters of academic cooperation may vary in scope by level of control (public-private), discipline (computer science, engineering, medicine), service provider (libraries, universities, science laboratories), or institutional level (research institute, government agency, corporation). Originating initially in the 1960s at a time of unprecedented expansion in higher education, consortia enabled institutions to share abundant resources. These consortia were voluntary, multi-institutional, multipurpose, and designed to serve their member institutions. By the mid-1970s, as institutions became more dependent on external sources of support, universities and colleges established consortia to sustain high-cost programs and facilities, strengthen constituent services, and penetrate new markets beyond their service area. In some instances, governing boards and funding agencies encouraged consortia development as evidence of economic collaboration among local and regional institutions to eliminate superfluous expenditures and achieve economies of scale and cost savings. Contemporary academic consortia may also be structured as school-university partnerships, business-university alliances, community-university coalitions, and multisystem networks. The current status of the academic consortium as an organizational form demonstrates its potential significance as a manifestation of the entrepreneurial university in a consumerist society.
Types of Consortia
The initial consortium structure consisted of three or more colleges and universities signing an agreement to cooperate in providing joint ventures, such as tuition waivers for cross-registration, faculty exchanges and professional development, interuniversity library privileges, joint purchasing of goods and services, and outreach projects. The success of these activities was heightened by comparability in missions, goals, laws, regulations, resources, and sources of support. More sophisticated and complex structural arrangements are now conceptualized around specialized purposes such as supercomputing, scientific research and development, medical school– teaching hospital collaboration, and cooperative degree programs in low-enrollment, specialized fields. In these cases, consortium objectives may be to reduce duplication and redundancy, gain access to federal agency funding, recruit international students, engage in advanced research, and utilize high-cost facilities.
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Since the 1990s increased institutional investments in information and communication technology, with support from business and industry, have added important dimensions to consortia design. This growth has been most evident in multisystems and research universities as well as across national and international boundaries. Factors contributing to their longevity include the leadership and commitment of senior executives; formal agreements on resource sharing; collaboration in agenda setting, issue definition, and problem solving; realistic time-lines for project development; continuity in personnel; and complementary strategies for overcoming inequities and cultural differences among disparate partners.
Multipurpose academic consortia. The Association for Consortium Leadership (ACL) has identified 125 member consortia in the United States; these vary in size from 3 to 100 institutions engaged in a variety of collaborative projects. Two successful multipurpose academic consortia are Five Colleges, Inc. (Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire Colleges and the University of Massachusetts– Amherst) and the Claremont Colleges, Inc., in California. Five Colleges is an independent, not-for-profit entity coordinated by an executive director and staff, drawing financial support from its member institutions and foundation grants, and operating collaborative faculty and student projects, including free transit throughout its service area. The Claremont Colleges in California, founded in 1925, brings together five independent but contiguous liberal arts colleges and two graduate institutions for collaborative business and academic services, most recently involving the development of an online cross-registration module in the five undergraduate colleges and better utilization of information technology across all seven institutions. The Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education (WICHE) works with fifteen member states in devising cooperative programs and conducting policy research that addresses the needs of students in its service area. These include a student exchange program at the undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels, a cooperative for educational telecommunications, and the Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC).
Technology-planning consortia. Other examples of consortia engaged in strategic technology planning across entire regions are the Colleges of Worcester (Massachusetts) Consortium, the New Hampshire College and University Council, and the Consortium of Universities in the Washington Metropolitan Area. The Internet2 Project, a consortium of more than 100 universities, has as its mission cooperative development, operation, and technology transfer of advanced, network-based applications and network services in its member universities as well as internationally. A technology initiative in the greater Chicago area brings together public and private colleges and universities in the North Suburban Higher Education Consortium with museums, school districts, and historical societies. A faculty initiative of twelve of the Pennsylvania State University's academic colleges and its library system, and two historically black institutions, Cheyney and Lincoln Universities, are also engaged in designing and developing standards for quality distance education. Its guiding principles address learning goals and content presentation, teaching-learning interactions, assessment and evaluation criteria, instructional media and software tools, and the development of learner support systems and services. A national initiative, the Community of Agile Partners in Education (CAPE), includes 125 colleges, universities, school districts, medical schools and hospitals, and community-based organizations throughout the United States and abroad, providing training in pedagogical applications of videoconferencing, Internet use, and other technologies, and the sponsorship of interinstitutional cooperative faculty teaching and research projects.
