How the Big Ten Academic Alliance is Driving Higher Education

Barbara McFadden Allen, executive director of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, says the Big Ten universities have worked together on research and teaching for as long as they have on athletics. In 2016 she described the alliance’s size, how its members learned to collaborate, and the research they were directing at brain injury, health inequities and how long students take to finish a degree.

More than an athletic conference

“Since 1958, the member universities at the Big Ten Athletic Conference have collaborated on the academic and research side of the house in the same way that they work together on the athletics side,” Allen said. “We just happen to know more about athletics because it garners more public attention than academics.” One of the first things they did together was buy “a big, expensive telescope together in South America.” Today they share labs, facilities and services, study abroad programs, course development and leadership development. “Anything that can be combined or leveraged, where you can drive some efficiency, these institutions work together, and our office helps that become accomplished.”

$11 billion in research a year

“It is astonishing,” Allen said. “These institutions conduct $11 billion in funded research each year. It’s more than the Ivy League and the University of California system combined.” The universities teach 600,000 students and have campuses in 11 states. “It’s an enormous enterprise.”

Learning to collaborate

Working across institutions is hard, she said, noting research that “60% of all corporate partnerships fail.” Over 25 years the universities “have become much more sophisticated about the ways they coordinate and collaborate.” They went from no shared purchasing to coordinating “something like $100 million in procurement for campuses every year. It could be as simple as buying test tubes.”

That back-office work sets the stage for what she called “the most exciting possible development,” connecting researchers across the $11 billion. “How do we connect researchers at Michigan who are unlocking the secrets of deep space to faculty in Illinois so that they can do their work smarter, faster, and better?” The benefit reaches undergraduates, “who then get a chance to work side-by-side with Nobel Laureates.”

Brain injury and health equity

The universities also direct research at problems close to home. With the Ivy League, they study traumatic brain injury in athletes. “In our group of universities, we have 20,000 student athletes. We have a population that needs to be protected,” Allen said. The aim is “sideline protocol that’s protective of them and responsive to them,” drawing on clinicians and researchers across the campuses.

With support from the Kellogg Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the alliance partners with public health agencies in its 11 states to study health inequities. “Why are health outcomes different for people in different socioeconomic strata, for example, or why are health outcomes worse for people that live in a particular ZIP code?” If university research can answer those questions, she said, “we can help shape public policy to improve health outcomes for children and others.”

Getting students to a degree faster

Virtually every Big Ten university, Allen said, is studying “why some students get out in four years, and some take seven years.” In her words, “We know the best way to drag down the cost of higher education for a family is to get out as quickly as possible, right? Get your degree in four years.” Colleges of education work with campus administrations on these questions, and the alliance helps them move faster: “We can do a lot of benchmarking across our campuses much more quickly and readily.”

Where to learn more

Research highlights, administrative projects and staff contacts are on the alliance’s website, www.btaa.org. “We’re always interested in understanding how we can do our work better and help our universities achieve their mission to teach, conduct research and engage our communities,” Allen said.

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