THE CONSORTIUM IN HIGHER EDUCATION

That institutions of higher education should cooperate with one another is hardly an uncommon 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 interinstitutional cooperation has been advocated with enthusiasm and near unanimity; national commissions have recommended it and governments have virtually 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 lexicon is not exact and these forms are not distinct. Because the consortium is the most formal 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?