(12-02-2013 01:50 PM)C Marlow Wrote: Then what is the advantage of the CIC? If it's not about the research dollars, which is true, then what tangible benefit does the CIC grant to Maryland that the school could not secure on its own by working with other universities? Collaboration is already a common practice done between universities that does not start nor stop with the CIC or the ACCIAC (see, the ACC has one too). Pitt collaborates with many different universities plus share assets for research projects as part of a team where applicable - just like the CIC institutions do. On top of that, if the CIC did not exist, IU, Purdue and Michigan would probably still collaborate when it makes sense simply due to geography alone.
That is what I'm curious about - what tangible benefits to the CIC have for member institutions that make it such a desirable club to want to join?
There are advantages. There are some cost savings from the purchasing consortiums. There are some distance education course sharing programs. There are some leadership and best practice symposia that they put on, mostly for IT staff. They're going to have a unified login system which is unique, but not implemented yet, but I'm not sure what major practical advantages that will serve in the days of dropbox and cloud computing. There are a couple of other nice things to the CIC, many of which aren't necessarily unique. There are always good things in any collaborative endeavor. But apparently, the most important part of the CIC is giving Big Ten fanboys some bewildering sense of import in belonging to it despite the fact that membership is solely due to belonging, or formerly belonging, to a particular
athletic conference.
What is there that can't be done by other universities in collaborations on their own? Almost nothing. In fact, some of the things you hear about, like library sharing or study-abroad, are pretty universally seen across academia. Other conferences do some of the same things. The CIC is a nice consortium, and what sets it apart is really the funding by membership dues that allow it to have more full time staff. But it isn't this academic heavy weight that some fanboys make it out to be. It isn't talked about anywhere in academia as much as it is on school fansite message boards, and most of those people had never heard of it before about three years ago when realignment bloggers took up the cause. Most academics have no idea what the CIC or the AAU is. That's why many of the statements are hilarious. If it was that important academically, then the Big Ten would be taking whomever they wanted: UNC, UVA, Texas, ND.... they could be C-USA and they'd take who they wanted... or alternatively, the CIC, which is a separate organization from the conference, would extend membership to schools like Harvard and MIT or Washington St. Louis.
If you are familiar with Pitt, then CIC-level initiatives don't remotely approach the level of collaboration between Pitt and Carnegie-Mellon, nor even like the collaboration between Maryland and Virginia Tech in setting up their vet school. On the research end, anyone with familiarity in research will tell you that is also not how research collaborations are established either. Those things start at the individual investigator level, with their colleagues in the field that can provide expertise or technical abilities in areas that they don't themselves possess, and those are more likely to be fostered at professional meetings in those fields if they don't come about from previously existing collegiate circles. There is almost nothing that exists in the CIC to foster that type of collaboration except for the singular TBI data-sharing consortium, which isn't exclusive to the CIC schools either. No researcher seeks faculty appointments or academic collaborations because a school is in the CIC, the AAU, or anything else. The notion is absolutely ridiculous. Schools, departments, and principal investigators stand on their own merits.