Dive Brief:
- With consortia not always providing the breadth and flexibility colleges need and mergers are often proving too risky to pull off, a sweet spot remaining between the two is the focus of a proposed TIAA-CREF solution.
- Inside Higher Ed reports that the option between mergers and consortia is a strategic alliance that merges administrative functions to increase capacity and cut costs.
- Finding a partner to complement an institution expands its capabilities and assets, and a partner that can supplement existing strengths allows for economies of scale, though some strategic alliances could allow for both.
Dive Insight:
One real-world example of a strategic alliance described by TIAA-CREF report author Michael K. Thomas is the TCS Education System, which launched in 2009 to serve the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and has since expanded to several other independent, nonprofit, accredited higher education institutions in Texas and California.
The closer these alliances get to affecting academic responsibilities of individual institutions, the harder they may be to get approved by accreditors. But a strategic alliance, more common in industries outside of higher ed, is certainly worth considering to give colleges and universities an alternative to closure or merger, but also more powerful than consortia.