Consortium

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 '', itself from con- 'together' and sors 'fate', meaning owner of means or comrade.

The Big Ten Academic Alliance and Five Colleges, Inc., along with the Claremont Consortium are among the oldest and most successful higher education consortia in the United States. The Big Ten Academic Alliance, formerly known as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, includes the members of the Big Ten athletic conference. The participants in Five Colleges, Inc. are: Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts 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, Claremont Graduate University, Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, Pitzer College, and Keck Graduate Institute. These consortia have pooled the resources of their member colleges and the universities to share human and material assets as well as to link academic and administrative resources.

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