Giving Compass' Take:

• Foundations can provide resources for colleges and universities to offer more innovative, student-centered approaches through institutional partnerships.

• How can donors measure the success of this type of collaboration? What are the benefits of institutional partnerships?

• Read more about funding higher education philanthropy. 

Colleges and universities are increasingly focusing on today’s students and how to help them navigate the path to their educational goals. Taking a more student-centered approach is leading campuses to realize the need to transform basic aspects of who they are and how they work.

But how can colleges and universities change quickly, and with limited resources? A growing number of institutions are finding that collaboration, rather than competition, is the key to making progress without reinventing the wheel. By partnering with campuses and systems and the organizations that support them, the foundation seeks to accelerate and expand the sharing of knowledge and lessons learned that will help institutions achieve their goals of educating more students and eliminating access and success gaps by race and income.

Institutional partnerships are a long-standing part of our work, and have evolved to include a broad cross-section of higher education:

  • Completion By Design
  • Frontier Set
  • Partner Learning Networks
  • Intermediaries For Scale: A Call For Partners

Read the full article about institutional partnerships from Postsecondary Success at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation