- published: 18 Jan 2014
- views: 41679
A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal.
Consortium is a Latin word, meaning 'partnership, association or society' and derives from consors 'partner', itself from con- 'together' and sors 'fate', meaning owner of means or comrade.
The Committee on Institutional Cooperation and Five Colleges, Inc., along with the Claremont Consortium are among of the oldest and most successful higher education consortia in the United States. The Committee on Institutional Cooperation includes the members of the Big Ten athletic conference plus the University of Chicago. The participants in Five Colleges, Inc. are: Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Another example of a successful consortium is the Five Colleges of Ohio of Ohio: Oberlin College, Ohio Wesleyan University, Kenyon College, College of Wooster and Denison University. The aforementioned Claremont Consortium (known as the Claremont Colleges) consists of Pomona College, Scripps College, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, Pitzer College, and the Keck Graduate Institute. These consortia have pooled the resources of their member colleges and the university to share human and material assets as well as to link academic and administrative resources.