The Corporate Partners of Higher Education Associations: A Social Network Analysis

Abstract

Higher education associations, the nonprofit entities that serve as professional development organizations for postsecondary administrators and faculty, are sites of university–industry (UI) contact, although these organizations are rarely examined in the UI literature. This study utilizes social network analysis to discover the indirect connections between industry and the academy as seen through sponsorship relations between corporations and associations. The findings show that several influential North American companies are connected to prominent higher education associations, particularly those associations that serve ‘managerial professionals.’ These corporate‐association ties may be pathways for increased market‐like behaviors in postsecondary education.

Keywords:

• University–industry relations
• inter‐organizational relations
• higher education
• professional associations

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the anonymous reviewers, Kenneth Koput (Eller College of Management, The University of Arizona), and Philo Hutcheson (Educational Policy Studies, George State University) for feedback on a previous version of this paper, which was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) in Kansas City, Missouri, November 2004.

Notes

1. The American Society of Association Executives has nearly 22,000 members and incidentally also has a corporate partner program (with three categories), a corporate membership designation, and a section of their website that allows members to ‘find an industry partner’ by searching over 3300 potential corporate sponsors or vendors. The ASAE's website states that in return for $100,000 per year corporate partners are offered “significant exposure for a company seeking to align itself with ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership. This partnership level contains bundled marketing opportunities in combination with high level and creative visibility to industry partners to help build and maintain a relationship with ASAE members and the association community as a whole.” Furthermore, the association's Strategic Partners are granted even more privileges in return for a $250,000 to $350,000 annual fee, including “extensive overall promotional rights and benefits, unique exposure at signature events through highly customized sponsorships, and exclusive access to our members.” As the ASAE is in the position of an organizational role model and is in the business of influencing the professional development of association executives, the level of corporate involvement in this organization is significant and clearly represents ‘best practices’ in the field of organization management. Retrieved 13 April 2006 from http://www.asaecenter.org

2. CUPA‐HR Corporate Advisory Council's Charge, retrieved 13 April 2006, from http://www.cupahr.org/corporatepart/corp_advisory_council.html

3. The number of associations in the sample is low, which might be explained by the limitations inherent in a web page analysis, including the fact that the association would have to have a web page to be included in the first place. In the sampling process I found the number of associations without a web page to be very low, however. Of greater concern is the fact that many (if not most) higher education associations are not indexed in a national data set. Until a more comprehensive list of higher education associations is created (likely by hand), I feel that it is better to rely on a systematic mechanism such as the Associations Unlimited database search rather than a random selection of associations. At such time that an inclusive data set is created, other sampling methods such as surveys will be considered.

4. Business and Company Resource Center estimate.