When someone connected with higher education thinks about interinstitutional collaboration, admissions and recruitment are not the first areas that come to mind. Historically, even in periods when potential college students were plentiful, colleges and universities, particularly those of the same type or those in close geographic proximity, have been competitive. Indeed, even in consortia or other collaborative arrangements where cooperation is the norm in many other areas, admissions and recruitment are difficult areas in which to rise above the natural tendency toward competition.
In the Greater Cincinnati Consortium of Colleges and Universities (GCCCU), which has an almost thirty-year history of collaboration and cooperation at many levels and in a wide range of areas, developing a true cooperative spirit among admissions officers has at times been difficult. However, a cooperative culture is slowly being developed, which ultimately will benefit all institutions and their potential students. This chapter will describe practices, programs, and ideas for institutions to work together in the recruitment of students. Many of these programs have been tried and are successful, in GCCCU and elsewhere, whereas others are still under development. Clearly, various consortia and other cooperative arrangements have different needs and possibilities for such cooperation, but I hope that some of the programs described here will be useful to other collaborative groups.