Collaboration: a Case of an Educational and Business Partnership

The primary purpose of this book is to describe, analyze and interpret how an institution of higher education collaborates. A case study using Resource Dependency Theory as the analytical lens was conducted, whereby a community college collaborated with the local school district and area business and industry that led to the construction of an Advanced Technology Center in their community. Stakeholders from each entity were interviewed during the study and their responses were analyzed. Individual survival, funding, the opportunity to share programs, equipment and facilities, location and the fact that it just made sense to do so were outlined by the stakeholders as reasons to collaborate. An additional finding was that a collaborative culture existed in this area and this proved to be a significant factor in the partnership.