Especially private, liberal arts-oriented, residential higher education—are evident all around us.
The Coalition presents a way to address these challenges by joining forces in creative ways that make member institutions stronger together while honoring their respective differences.
The Hechinger Report, in its April 26, 2024 edition, noted that colleges were closing at a pace of one per week during the spring of 2024.
What can a small, independent college or university do, in this environment, to put themselves on a sustainable path to enrollment growth and fiscal stability?
As importantly, how can we ensure that universities with mission-driven commitments to access, affordability, advancement, and opportunity — for the good of all learners—are supported in efforts to expand their impact, increase access, and address workforce needs?
While the Coalition for the Common Good is intended to be a self-funding operation that generates net operating margins that are shared by members, there are opportunities to provide support to the CCG.
Key organizational and operational investments specified below will support the growth and expansion of the system. By ensuring that the Coalition and its newest affiliate institutions can more rapidly align operations, the Coalition can focus its commitment to expanding educational opportunities to more learners across the country.
Certainly, each member institution will continue seeking support for traditional funding opportunities like programmatic investments and scholarships for all learners. The CCG is committed to expanding access to traditionally underserved and underrepresented student populations as well as for adults, whether working professionals considering advancement and meaningful career growth or those seeking to complete a college degree. If your organization sees a strong mission-alignment in funding these kinds of opportunities, we welcome learning more about your hopes for these investments.
The CCG is such a unique innovation that regional accreditors, and state and federal regulators, do not have prior models of not-for-profit institutions collaborating in this way. These organizations have not fully grasped the potential of the Coalition and struggle to understand how regulations designed to counter the negative practices of some for-profit actors may negatively impact this type of collaboration. The co-founders of the Coalition share a common accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, but new members will likely be accredited by other regional accreditors. Providing funding for regulatory and accreditor expenses will support the expansion of the CCG.
The CCG understands that requiring members to adopt a single ERP would be a massive barrier to entry for many potential members. Funding the development of middleware systems to manage unified reporting of data while allowing affiliate members to remain on their existing ERP system will support expansion.
In order to allow students and faculty to move between courses offered by member institutions, increasing benefits for students like articulated graduate pathways, short-term “Study Away’ courses and enhanced immersive experiences between universities requires a shared LMS. Funding transitional costs for new members would reduce barriers to membership.
The work of the Coalition is currently being done by a cross institutional cabinet and dually staffed working committees. In every role, staff are serving both the CCG and their home institution. Providing funding to sustain core leadership roles for a limited time to allow the CCG to reach its full potential would greatly enhance the quality and timeliness of the work in progress.
Contact us and see how you can support the future of higher education.
Josh Jacobs, Ed.D.
Vice Chancellor of CCG Advancement
