Partnerships and Collaboration in Higher Education: AEHE, Volume 36, Number 2

The current context in higher education is becoming increasingly complex. Coupled with this organizational complexitiy of operations is a climate of diminishing resources and funding for education in general. Calls for educational reform and limited resources make collaborative responses an attractive option because of the ability to pool talent and resources. Collaborative efforts take many forms. Partnerships may emerge from insitutions working together, departments working across institutions or with community partners, or colleges and universities pairing across national borders. Likewise, collaborations may emerge between and among faculty members that resemble more traditional research projects. From these faculty collaborations, organizational partnerships may then develop.

This monograph explroes the key building blocks required to create successful joint ventures. One section reviews partnerships from an institutional perspective, another covers individual collaborations, and a section on future issues identifies threats to partnerships, emergence of international partnerships, and steps to create strategic partnerships.

The target audience for this volume includes those interested in developing partnerships or better supporting existing alliances. Administrators with a goal of using partnerships to parlay organizational strengths while saving resources can anticipate problems with the formation of partnerships, undersnd the elemtns that provide support for group work, and learn how to frame the partnership to leverage commitment through a shared vision. Faculty interested in collaboration will find many valuable insights regarding the right questions to ask before committing to a project. And policymakers and grant-funding agencies can use the information to craft mandates and grant language to best support successful partnerships. ultimately, understanding the process of developing partnerships can result in more successful collaborations.

This is Vol 36 Issue 2 of the Jossey Bass Ashe Higher Education Report. Each monograph in the series is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education problem, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.