A lot has been made of the Big Ten Academic Alliance as an advantage to schools joining the B1G. But what is it really? I was curious (as someone that worked in a research center at Rutgers and other places) what it really amounted to. I always suspected that the answer is not much. Or at least, less than it would seem given all attention paid to it.
So I dug in a little and looked. The short answer is that I think it's just not a big deal in terms of actual research or money, and it's mostly about prestige and branding at this point.
So what does the Alliance offer:
- Reciprocal library agreements. - All big schools have these. Prior to the Big Ten Rutgers had similar agreements with Princeton, Columbia, and a bunch of other schools already.
- Coop purchasing agreement. - Rutgers was already part of a number of state and national purchasing coops that has as much purchasing power as the Alliance.
- Training courses for academic administrators. - OK, but not a big deal.
- Some other data sharing agreements. - Again, lots of researchers and universities share data. In academia you have to share data anyway.
- Opportunity to collaborate on research and grants. - Rutgers and all the big research universities, and any good research lab or professor, collaborate with whomever they want, whenever they want, based on who the best researchers are. They form teams based on who they want to work with, and who the people are that have the big famous publications. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think the Alliance would ever change any decision on who researchers collaborate with on their projects.
So there is nothing here that I can see that Rutgers didn't already have. Does anyone with some first hand experience have anything they can add to this?
I think that the Big Ten is going to be positioning itself as the elite academic alternative to the SEC. And I think that's really smart as prestige is everything to a university. But in terms of big dollars flowing from the Academic Alliance that outweighs sports considerations, I'm not seeing it yet.
So I dug in a little and looked. The short answer is that I think it's just not a big deal in terms of actual research or money, and it's mostly about prestige and branding at this point.
So what does the Alliance offer:
- Reciprocal library agreements. - All big schools have these. Prior to the Big Ten Rutgers had similar agreements with Princeton, Columbia, and a bunch of other schools already.
- Coop purchasing agreement. - Rutgers was already part of a number of state and national purchasing coops that has as much purchasing power as the Alliance.
- Training courses for academic administrators. - OK, but not a big deal.
- Some other data sharing agreements. - Again, lots of researchers and universities share data. In academia you have to share data anyway.
- Opportunity to collaborate on research and grants. - Rutgers and all the big research universities, and any good research lab or professor, collaborate with whomever they want, whenever they want, based on who the best researchers are. They form teams based on who they want to work with, and who the people are that have the big famous publications. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think the Alliance would ever change any decision on who researchers collaborate with on their projects.
So there is nothing here that I can see that Rutgers didn't already have. Does anyone with some first hand experience have anything they can add to this?
I think that the Big Ten is going to be positioning itself as the elite academic alternative to the SEC. And I think that's really smart as prestige is everything to a university. But in terms of big dollars flowing from the Academic Alliance that outweighs sports considerations, I'm not seeing it yet.