Dive Brief:
- The 11 institutions in the University Innovation Alliance are having faster progress than expected when it comes to increasing the number of graduates they produce, thanks in part to the collaborative problem-solving that defines it.
- According to eCampus News, collaboration has allowed universities to identify strategies that are working at one institution and replicate them at another in record time — including predictive analytics, which at least two campuses said they didn’t want to do in 2014 when the alliance launched and now have fully implemented.
- Alliance members communicate among CEOs and senior-level liaisons, and at the campus-level, they have small student success teams focused exclusively on narrowing performance gaps across student groups, with plans to publish findings and success stories so other campuses can benefit.
Dive Insight:
One reason why the University Innovation Alliance believes it has been able to achieve so much through collaboration is because its members do not see themselves as competitors. As eCampus News reports, leaders of the alliance urge other institutions to create similar collaborative bodies. The group itself is not accepting new members as it wants to remain at a manageable size, but it is establishing a way for other universities to "observe" its work.
When the alliance formed in 2014, it wanted to increase the number of graduates member schools produced beyond normal growth by 68,000 students. Now it believes they will reach 94,000, contributing to growth that is expected to be critical to the national economy.