CLAREMONT UNIVERSITY CONSORTIUM
How it started: The roots of the consortium date to 1923, when James Blaisdell, then president of Pomona College, envisioned “a group of institutions divided into small colleges … around a library and other utilities which they would use in common.” Today the consortium, with a budget of $38 million, provides 33 services to seven independent institutions in Southern California, all located within a mile of one another.
More private colleges want to collaborate to share costs and administrative responsibilities. But such coordination isn’t easy.
Focus: The consortium’s 33 services include campus safety, a central library and bookstore, health and counseling services, ethnic centers, payroll and accounting, and human resources.
Advice: Five of the colleges are beginning to share computer-network services, but one of the challenges in rolling out the new program is that their previous spending on networks varied widely. “Be careful to not put something in shared services that points down to the lowest common denominator,” says Stig Lanesskog, the consortium’s chief executive.
COLLEGES OF THE FENWAY
How it started: The consortium began in 1996, when three colleges banded together to negotiate a joint student health-insurance contract. The six current members are within a 25-minute walk of one another in Boston.
Focus: Students at the member institutions can cross-register for courses, if seats are available, with no money exchanged among the colleges. The consortium runs intramural-sports and performing-arts programs for its members and holds an annual block party for all students early in the fall. Fifty-six percent of incoming students said the consortium’s services had an impact on their decision to attend.
Advice: “Each college needs someone who has the responsibility of paying attention to the collaboration,” says Claire Ramsbottom, the consortium’s executive director. “Those folks that have done that find that their participation is more successful.”
WISCONSIN ASSOCIATION OF INDEPENDENT COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
How it started: The association began offering shared services in 2002 and says it has saved its 24 members more than $115 million since then. Now it offers more than 40 cost-saving programs, and it promises not to drop a service once it starts.
Focus: The programs include leadership-development training, print and copy services, collection-agency services, and student health insurance. Some of the members also collaborate more intensively on the purchase, installation, and maintenance of software programs.
Advice: “A collaboration needs a highly qualified professional staff that can devote their full time to this — you can’t do it by committee,” says Rolf Wegenke, the association’s president, who leads a staff of 17. “The people on member campuses all have full-time jobs. They may know their own college well, but they may not know much about their neighboring colleges.”
LEHIGH VALLEY ASSOCIATION OF INDEPENDENT COLLEGES
How it started: The association was founded in 1969 to allow students at member institutions to cross-register for classes. The institutions are located within 25 miles of one another in eastern Pennsylvania.
Focus: Although started on the basis of academic collaboration, the consortium has since developed several shared services, including library services, a sustainability coordinator, a health-insurance collaboration for employees, and a joint-purchasing program.
Advice: Diane Dimitroff, the executive director, advises colleges interested in collaborating try it out for a few years before formalizing the structure by setting up a separate organization. “Even if you’re just a tiny 501(c)(3), you still have to do an annual audit and regular filings with the Internal Revenue Service,” she says. “If you’re a program within a member campus, the college will do all those things.”
Correction (3/28/2017, 10:50 a.m.): The Colleges of the Fenway consortium has six members, not five, as this article originally stated.
