A community college partnership with a for-profit education corporation

Abstract

In a first-of-its-kind partnership, Higher Education Partners, LLC (formerly The Princeton Review), a for-profit education corporation, invested millions of dollars to create a facility and underwrite expenses to address a shortage of educational programs at Bristol Community College, a Massachusetts community college, with revenue to be divided between them. The entrepreneurial response of Bristol Community College was unique at that time and offers valuable lessons for entrepreneurial responses generally. This case study examined issues of institutional culture, leadership, and the process by which a previously unthinkable partnership could be supported and implemented, achieve its educational goals, and provide revenue to the college, all while preserving the core values of the college. The research identified the conditions that existed for this initiative to be possible: stability, trust in campus leadership, support for risk-taking, shared commitment to mission, and belief that campus leadership was mission-driven, as well as the presence of a potential partner that was trusted and deemed creditable. The research provides a helpful strategy for working within the cultural and other characteristics of a college to achieve such a result. Entrepreneurial endeavors are valuable to institutions of public higher education given the current state of diminished financial support and limited opportunities and resources to meet demand for programming.