THE CONSORTIUM IN HIGHER EDUCATION
| Pages | 23-36 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb009730 |
| Published date | 01 February 1975 |
| Date | 01 February 1975 |
| Author | DANIEL WALLACE LANG |
| Subject Matter | Education |
THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION
VOLUME XIII, NUMBER 2 OCTOBER, 1975
THE CONSORTIUM IN HIGHER EDUCATION
DANIEL WALLACE LANG
That institutions of
higher education should
cooperate
with one
another
is
hardly
an
uncom-
mon idea. In recent years, especially since colleges
and
universities
began
to feel pressures
for growth and, later, constraints of financial stringency, the general concept of inter-
institutional cooperation has
been
advocated
with
enthusiasm
and
near unanimity; national
commissions
have
recommended it
and
governments
have
virtual!} demanded it. But
what
is
much less common is knowledge about the formal arrangements by which cooperation has
been
achieved widely in
the
United States
and now
is
the
object of serious consideration and
some application in other countries. The consortium is not the only application of the
cooperative idea. Councils, coordinating boards, compacts, federations, are all forms of
cooperative arrangements among colleges and universities, but the inter-institutional lex-
icon is not exact and these forms
are
not distinct. Because
the
consortium is the most for-
mal and complex organization for inter-institutional cooperation, it represents
well
almost
all of the characteristics and problems of all cooperative endeavor between higher
educational institutions. Thus,
the
observations
and
conclusions
made
about
the
consortium
have a broader applicability. This discussion will address four basic questions about inter-
institutional cooperation as represented by the consortium: What motivates colleges and
universities to cooperate with one another? What are the advantages of inter-institutional
cooperation? What are the disadvantages? What are the organizational and managerial
problems of the consortium?
THE CONSORTIUM: A DEFINITION
The modern usage of
the
word "consortium" began late in the
19th
cen-
tury
when
it was
used
to describe
a
peculiar kind of
banking
partnership in
which the banks of two or more nations formed an association to aid
another nation financially. The term is still used in the world of business,
but more recently has been applied to cooperative organizations among
colleges and universities. The specific use of the term taken aside, earlier
examples of colleges and universities cooperating with one another can be
found,
but the consortium idea was applied
first
in the United States in the
decade before World War II and became
common
and popular there after
the war. Since then consortia have been formed to provide research
laboratories, computer facilities, libraries, faculty and student exchanges,
programs abroad, conservatories, specialized research centres, admissions
offices, and even broadcast facilities. The consortium idea, then, is a pop-
ular one, the applications of which take many forms.
The popularity of the idea accounts in part for the general absence of
critical commentary about it. The idea of
cooperation
among colleges and
DANIEL W. LANG is Director of
Program
Planning, University of
Toronto.
Mr Lang was
formerly Associate Dean at Wesleyan University, Connecticut. From 1968-1973 he was
campus coordinator of
the
Twelve College Exchange and the Wesleyan-Connecticut College
Exchange.
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