all requests for public or commercial use and translation rights should be submitted to rightsoecdorg the author is grateful to harry de boer elise miller and akiyoshi yonezawa for country case studies that helped to inform this work collaborations alliances and mergers among higher education institutions may seek to enhance academic performance to achieve economic efficiencies or to better align the network and performance of institutions to public needs institutional collaboration occurs less frequently and successfully in the design and delivery of instruction than in other domains owing largely to the traditionally autonomous and solitary role of faculty in this area