{"id":2430,"date":"2026-09-26T02:30:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T02:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/?p=2430"},"modified":"2026-09-26T02:30:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T02:30:30","slug":"why-dont-colleges-form-affinity-operational-systems-rather-that-wait-till-forced-to-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/?p=2430","title":{"rendered":"Why Don\u2019t Colleges Form Affinity Operational Systems Rather That Wait Till Forced to Close"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<p>There are so many private colleges teetering on the brink of financial collapse, it is surprising that groups of these colleges have not formed affinity operational systems. The colleges could maintain their academic identity and campus but could join large administrative systems that would conduct institutional administration, academic administration, financial operations, debt management, IT or AI, marketing campaigns, and outsourced services. The cost advantages would be sizeable, which would leave the identity of individual colleges intact. The affinity grouping must be large enough so that spreading the costs of the administrative systems across the set of members will result in an average cost substantially below the current costs for each member.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, too many colleges slip away because they either believe that they will grow out of their current fiscal struggles or cannot find worthy partners. Here are several possible sets of colleges that could form an affinity operational system.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Catholic Universities in the Philadelphia area;<\/li>\n<li>Catholic Universities in the Chicago \u2013 Milwaukee region;<\/li>\n<li>Catholic Colleges in New England;<\/li>\n<li>Private unaffiliated colleges in New England;<\/li>\n<li>Private unaffiliated colleges in Mid-Western States;<\/li>\n<li>Any set of private colleges that have common missions and are concentrated in a geographic region.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This proposal is not meant to be a magic bullet for private colleges, but it does offer possibilities of survival rather than waiting until fate drives private colleges over the brink.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are so many private colleges teetering on the brink of financial collapse, it is surprising that groups of these colleges have not formed affinity operational systems. The colleges could maintain their academic identity and campus but could join large administrative systems that would conduct institutional administration, academic administration, financial operations, debt management, IT or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"coauthors":[24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2430"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2430"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2433,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2430\/revisions\/2433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2430"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}