The Coalition for the Common Good (CCG) represents a uniquely innovative model for mission-driven, tuition-dependent universities. Because the model itself is new, it deserves a clear and careful description. Organized into four short essays, the following series offers an early attempt to illuminate the ways the Coalition is being conceived, designed, and implemented. It also explores the promise the CCG holds for strengthening its members and sustaining a higher education ecosystem whose health depends on the flourishing of diverse institutions.
- Part 1 addresses the financial and structural rationale for building collective strength.
- Part 2 focuses on how the CCG expands opportunity and access for students.
- Part 3 examines how shared services, academic pathways, and governance innovations enhance institutional viability.
- Part 4 explores the broader impact of the CCG on communities, democracy, and the common good across the nation.
Together, these essays outline how the Coalition translates purpose into practice—how collaboration can become a disciplined strategy rather than an act of goodwill. The chapters are written to inform conversation among cabinet members, boards, and partner institutions who want to learn more about the CCG and how it functions as a federation of strengths not a merger of identities.
Part 1: Rebuilding the Promise and Possibility of Small Private Colleges through the Coalition for the Common Good (CCG)
When Slow Change Becomes Structural Risk
The danger confronting small to mid-size, tuition-driven universities is seldom sudden collapse; it’s an incremental and subtle erosion. Over time, the institution becomes more fragile as enrollment softens, net tuition thins, and deferred maintenance mounts.
Because the decline unfolds slowly, presidents, boards, and employees grow accustomed to operating with less funding, fewer students, and smaller reserves. The scarcity begins to feel ordinary—until, at an increasing number of institutions, something essential gives way and the pain becomes palpable. (To learn more about effective presidential succession planning, read this blog post.)
Recent analyses show that only sixty-three percent of nonprofit colleges and universities remain financially healthy, a figure that reflects not mismanagement but the cumulative effect of demographic shifts, inflation, and decades of underinvestment. Yet the institutions that have fared best are those that recognized the “writing on the wall” early and acted before a full-blown crisis emerged. Otterbein’s and Antioch’s university presidents and boards, for example, chose to partner with each other while standing on stable footing—a proactive move grounded not in panic but in prudence.
The Coalition for the Common Good (CCG) offers a way forward for proactive colleges and universities. It helps colleges and universities address the market and operational pressures that threaten their stability by pooling strength without sacrificing independence. Co-founded by Antioch University and Otterbein University in 2023, the Coalition is a nonprofit alliance that brings together mission-aligned institutions around a shared commitment to adult learners, equity, and the public good.
A Tyton Partners interview with Otterbein University and CCG President, John Comerford, underscores the point. According to President Comerford, the Coalition was built on deep mission alignment, not just financial expediency. Antioch and Otterbein both trace their roots to equity-driven founding acts: coeducation in the 1840s, racial inclusion in the 1850s, and advocacy for displaced Japanese-American students during WWII. Those shared legacies shaped the partnership’s values audit long before legal documents were drafted.
This interview surfaces a Coalition “takeaway” for presidents and boards: mission-fit precedes market-fit. A “values alignment audit” will likely be the first step in any CCG partnership conversation. When the moral DNA is aligned, financial structures can be negotiated with integrity.
Toward Collective Strength
When financial pressure mounts, boards and presidents often narrow their focus to cost containment and short-term fixes. Yet durability requires more than defense; it demands new forms of collaboration that expand scale without erasing identity as a merger or acquisition might. The most forward-looking leaders are beginning to balance independence with connectedness—to act on the insight that collective strength is now a condition of institutional autonomy.
Enter the Coalition for the Common Good
Founded by Antioch University and Otterbein University, the Coalition for the Common Good (CCG) reimagines how mission-driven, tuition-dependent colleges can thrive together. Each member retains its own board, accreditation, and character while participating in shared academic pathways and operational services that lower costs, widen opportunity, and preserve independence. Presently, governance frameworks are being refined to clarify the reserved powers member institutions assign to the CCG Board—a structuredesigned to preserve local authority while maximizing the participation in a federated system of like colleges and universities.
The CCG’s evolving design aims to convert vulnerability into vitality. It rebuilds promise by extending educational pathways that serve students across institutions, and it rebuilds possibility by turning financial fragility into shared stability. While some universities turn to Online Program Managers (OPMs), engage in course sharing agreements, or try to stretch limited resources further to meet expanding needs, the Coalition offers another pathway.
As the model continues to evolve, the features described in these essays represent current design concepts rather than finalized commitments.
Through positioning Antioch University—with its national reach—as the Coalition’s provider of adult and graduate education, the CCG expands unique, in-demand regional graduate programs to new markets, growing enrollment and revenue for Coalition members.
Under the Coalition’s academic design, member institutions will transfer their existing graduate programs to Antioch University, which will assume responsibility for scaling them and offering them in flexible, low-residency formats across the country. This structure enables each member to focus on its undergraduate mission while extending graduate access through Antioch’s national accreditation and infrastructure.
In doing so, the Coalition seeks to keep small and mid-sized colleges—the essential middle of the higher-education ecosystem—not merely alive but integral to the nation’s educational and democratic fabric.
The CCG also allows smaller institutions to deepen their roles as anchor institutions in their local communities by expanding the menu of workforce and community development strategies they can deploy. These strategies serve both individuals seeking to advance their careers through education and employers aiming to strengthen their workforce.
Part 2: Expanding College Students’ Opportunities through the Coalition for the Common Good (CCG)
The same forces that erode financial health—demographic contraction, shifting labor markets, and rising costs—also narrow the pathways that help learners move from aspiration to achievement. Students feel the turbulence of higher education’s fragility long before balance sheets record it.
For mission-driven, tuition-dependent universities, the question is no longer whether to collaborate but how to align partnership with purpose. Strengthening student opportunity now requires the same kind of shared approach that sustains institutional resilience.
Across the country, adult learners and traditional undergraduate students alike are seeking education that is flexible, affordable, and aligned with purpose. They want credentials that connect directly to meaningful work and graduate study. Meeting those expectations requires a kind of scale and coordination that few small to mid-size private institutions can achieve alone.
Building Scale, Forging Partnerships, Preserving Independence
The Coalition for the Common Good (CCG) offers that scale and coordination. Founded by Antioch University and Otterbein University, the Coalition links mission-aligned universities in a network that expands academic access while preserving institutional independence.
Through the CCG, undergraduates at member colleges will gain clear, affordable routes into Antioch’s justice-oriented graduate and professional programs, delivered in flexible, hybrid, online, and low-residency formats that allow students to remain embedded in their communities while advancing their studies.
Market research undertaken for the Coalition showed significant increases in student interest towards colleges and universities that were part of an integrated system like the CCG. 83% of surveyed prospective undergraduates, and 70% of survey adults were more interested in a school that was a member of such a system. The benefits that both groups found most appealing:
- Accelerated degree programs
- Ability to take courses from any System member
- Connections to more companies for internship and career opportunities.
The first of these benefits—Graduate Early Admissions Pathways (GEAPs)—is already signaling results. At Otterbein, new student enrollment grew by 23 percent within two years of co-founding and joining the CCG, a strong suggestion that student demand for accelerated, affordable routes to graduate study was an impetus for applying to and enrolling at Otterbein.
Each partner keeps its own board, faculty, and character intact. What they share are academic pathways that connect undergraduate and graduate study, professional networks that link students to mission-driven employers, and institutional capacity that gives learners access to resources no single campus could offer alone. By pooling strength without losing identity, the Coalition expands what every member can provide its students.
Seven Ways Students Stand to Benefit
- Accelerated Graduate Pathways. Shared-credit programs would let students take certain courses once, count them twice, and pay for them once—reducing both time and cost to degree.
- Low-Residency Flexibility. Graduate study blends online learning with brief in-person residencies, enabling professional advancement without relocation.
- Accreditation Assurance. All graduate programs operate under Antioch University’s Higher Learning Commission accreditation and Title IV eligibility, ensuring rigor and access to federal aid.
- Broader Academic Access. Coalition students may enroll in select online or hybrid courses taught by faculty across member universities, deepening learning and connection. This opportunity provides the best of both worlds: the face-to-face connections with fellow learners and faculty with the flexibility of a geographically dispersed learning community across the country and world. (To learn more about how senior leaders can support faculty in innovative teaching models, see this blog post.)
- National Internship Networks. Antioch’s partnerships with nonprofits and businesses could extend to undergraduates, linking coursework with purposeful, real-world experience. And the network of CCG undergraduate institutions gives Antioch graduate students opportunities to serve as graduate assistants, teaching assistants, and graduate interns on member campuses.
- Joint study abroad and “Study Away’ programs where a student may have the opportunity to enroll in a short-term (or semester-long) immersive educational experience at a member institution.
- Career and Community Connection. Coalition alumni will form a national web of practitioners committed to equity and civic engagement, turning education into public impact.
Making the Route to Graduate Study More Straightforward and Affordable
The Coalition for the Common Good helps interested students traverse a connected path from undergraduate to graduate study and from learning to work. Key undergraduate and graduate programs are being designed for alignment so that some credits can be “double counted.” The intent is to reduce the confusion and inefficiency students often face when moving from the bachelor’s level to the master’s. The result: a clearer, faster, and more affordable route toward advanced credentials and meaningful careers—one that makes the journey to an advanced degree easier to navigate and complete, and that gives CCG members a distinct competitive advantage in their market.
A Win-Win-Win
For students, the Coalition for the Common Good creates a direct and affordable bridge from undergraduate study to advanced credentials and meaningful work.
For member institutions, it provides a competitive enrollment advantage and a recurring differentiator, since few small or mid-sized colleges can market a robust, nationally recognized graduate portfolio to prospective undergraduates.
And, for the country as a whole, it strengthens the small and mid-sized universities that so often serve as regional anchors—preserving access, mission diversity, and economic vitality in the communities they serve.
Part 3: Strengthening Institutional Viability through the Coalition for the Common Good (CCG)
The CCG Reframes Collaboration as Strategy
For decades, collaboration in higher education has been discussed largely as an act of goodwill. The Coalition for the Common Good (CCG) recasts it as a disciplined strategy that enhances sustainability, deepens mission impact, and strengthens competitive position. Within the CCG, cooperation is not a soft virtue or a happenstance; it is a choreographed strategy play among partnered institutions to advance both mission and market position.
The Coalition alliance reinforces that claim. What began as exploratory conversation quickly evolved into a governance and regulatory framework shaped by expert counsel from the U.S. Department of Education and the Higher Learning Commission. The lesson: collaboration succeeds when strategy, compliance, and culture are in sync.
As the model continues to evolve, it is being designed to offer a shared graduate and adult learner program, shared efficiency, shared reach, and shared resilience. Each member will retain its own board, faculty, and identity while leveraging common systems that lower cost and raise capacity.
The CCG Improves Operational Strength through Shared Services
The Coalition for the Common Good (CCG) aims to turn collaboration into operational advantage. Through its emerging Shared Services Organization (SSO), it is envisioned that member institutions will be able to opt into shared services at levels that address their particular needs. Early areas of focus may include information technology, risk management, legal services, payroll, and learning management systems.
Rather than consolidating operations, the goal is to coordinate expertise and infrastructure so that participating campuses can access enterprise-level tools and talent that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive to sustain independently. The model is being designed to improve quality, reduce duplication, and free time, energy, and resources for the academic and student-experience work that distinguishes each institution.
The CCG Aims to be a “Value-Add” not a “Discount Model”
For tuition-dependent universities, participation in the CCG provides both an immediate enrollment differentiator and a long-term stabilizer. Member institutions can signal to prospective undergraduates that they are part of a larger educational ecosystem—one that offers affordable, accelerated routes to respected graduate and professional programs. That clarity strengthens recruitment, supports retention, and links enrollment growth to mission fulfillment rather than to discounting.
In most tuition-driven settings, growth is pursued through incremental price cuts (i.e., “tuition discounts”) that temporarily lift headcount numbers but erode average net tuition and brand value. The CCG upends the assumption that growth requires discounting: it grows enrollment by adding value, not by subtracting price. (For a comprehensive analysis of the CCG’s value-add approach, see this essay.)
Early data from Otterbein’s experience with CCG-backed programs prompt a critical research question: To what extent was Otterbein’s Fall 2025 enrollment gain driven by the perceived value of the Graduate Early Admissions Pathways (GEAPs) rather than by deep tuition discounts?
Looking ahead, the CCG is designed to appeal strongly to students who seek a coherent pathway to meaningful work and advanced study and to institutions that aim to embody the integrated values of academic excellence, mission preservation, and quality assurance. By reinforcing each member’s capacity to serve as an anchor institution within its local community, the Coalition also broadens how colleges can contribute to regional well-being—expanding the menu of workforce, civic, and cultural partnerships that connect higher education to the common good.
The CCG Leverages Fixed Costs for Greater Reach and Return
On the financial side, shared procurement, coordinated vendor contracts, and collective technology platforms will allow member institutions to leverage fixed costs more effectively. Instead of each campus bearing the full expense of maintaining specialized systems, the coalition model enables them to maximize existing investments—extending their reach, quality, and compliance capacity.
The result is predictable savings and reinvestment capacity—resources that can be redirected to academic innovation and the student experience, where true institutional differentiation occurs.
The CCG Amplifies Academic Reach while Preserving Mission Integrity
The Coalition for the Common Good (CCG) is being built to support academic collaboration while preserving each institution’s distinctive mission and character. It is plausible that member universities will co-develop certificates or complementary undergraduate pathways leading to advanced degrees in fields for which Antioch University is known—education, mental health and wellbeing, environmental sustainability, leadership and change, creative writing, individualized studies, and social justice. Cross-registration could allow students at one university to take select online or hybrid courses taught by faculty at another, broadening both access and academic choice without requiring new brick-and-mortar expansion.
Early discussions also envision shared faculty seminars, research clusters, and short-term exchanges that build professional community across institutions while preserving each campus’s distinctive teaching culture. The goal is not to merge programs but to multiply opportunity—to make scarce resources stretch further through intentional coordination.
Each university continues to advance its mission within a growing ecosystem that amplifies reach and relevance. By sharing design rather than identity, the coalition enables small and mid-sized institutions to expand offerings, test innovations, and strengthen their distinctive profiles. Over time, the CCG aims to make collaborative teaching and program design as routine as shared accreditation or cross-registration—a practical path to becoming more fully themselves through collective strength rather than conformity.
The CCG Sustains Independence through Strategic Interdependence
The Coalition for the Common Good (CCG) shows that independence and interdependence need not be opposites. As shared services and aligned academic pathways take shape under clear governance and mutual accountability, collaboration becomes a vehicle for viability—a means to safeguard institutional autonomy while expanding collective strength.
For governing boards and presidents, the takeaway is clear: sustainability now depends as much on the alliances an institution cultivates as on the assets it controls. The CCG provides a practical and evolving framework for that next chapter of higher education—one in which small and mid-sized universities remain distinctive, durable, and mission-anchored, continuing to provide the diversity and depth essential to the American higher education ecosystem. Such sustainability depends on the alliances they will build, not the silos they have constructed.
Part 4: Advancing Democracy and the Common Good through the Coalition for the Common Good (CCG)
From Institutional Reform to Civic Renewal
The Coalition for the Common Good (CCG) is more than an academic alliance; it is a civic experiment. Built on the conviction that American higher education exists not only to prepare individuals for work but also to strengthen democracy, the CCG seeks to connect universities whose democracy- and social-justice-in-action missions are as much reality as rhetoric. At a time when polarization, inequity, and authoritarian leanings threaten the lived experience of democracy, the Coalition unites mission-driven universities to model multi-institutional cooperation, shared accountability, and civic commitment.
Antioch and Otterbein—co-founders of the CCG—were both born from reformist traditions. Antioch’s founding president, Horace Mann, urged graduates to “win some victory for humanity,” while Otterbein’s early leaders advanced gender and racial inclusion at a time when such commitments were rare. The CCG extends that lineage into the 21st century: its design links institutional resilience to democratic renewal, arguing that universities best serve themselves when they serve the common good. (Learn more about the Coalition’s financial sustainability model and business innovation strategies.)
Reimagining the University as a Civic Actor
Across the United States, small and mid-sized universities function as anchor institutions—stable employers, conveners of dialogue, and catalysts for community innovation. Yet financial fragility and public skepticism have weakened that civic role. The CCG helps restore it by enabling mission-aligned campuses to share the costs of complexity while expanding their collective impact.
Through coordinated academic offerings, shared services, and community-based initiatives, member universities can reinvest in the work that binds learning to life: local partnerships, workforce development, environmental stewardship, and democratic education. When one campus experiments with a new model of civic engagement or community-based learning, others in the Coalition can adapt and extend it. This creates a multiplier effect—an expanding web of institutions that treat civic contribution not as a side project but as a strategic function.
Educating for Civic Competence and the Common Good
The Coalition’s academic architecture rests on Antioch’s national graduate platform, which opens new ways to teach and practice democracy across disciplines and throughout the country. Antioch’s well-established graduate programs in education, leadership, environmental studies, and creative writing approach civic life from different angles: some through policy and pedagogy, others through collaboration and systems thinking, others still through stewardship of the planet, and at least one through the power of narrative, personal experience, and community. Together, they invite students to see democracy not only as a form of government but as a daily practice of listening, creating, and engaging. By linking these graduate programs to the undergraduate colleges in the network, the CCG builds a continuum of civic learning that stretches from the first year of college to advanced professional study.
In the process, the Coalition helps counter the growing divide between technical proficiency and civic competence. Its pathways invite students not only to master skills but to apply them in ways that strengthen communities—whether through climate action projects, mental-health initiatives, or leadership practicums embedded in local nonprofits. In this sense, the CCG reclaims one of higher education’s oldest promises: that learning and citizenship are interdependent pursuits.
From the Local to the National
Because its members are geographically dispersed yet mission-aligned, the CCG can translate local innovation into national influence. Each participating campus remains rooted in its own region, serving its surrounding communities, while the Coalition’s shared structure enables those local insights to circulate across the network. A social-work practicum in Dayton might inform new fieldwork in Santa Barbara; a sustainability curriculum in Keene, New Hampshire could evolve into a certificate accessible to students nationwide.
This balance between rootedness and reach demonstrates how small, value-anchored institutions can act collectively without losing their individuality. In a fragmented national landscape, such cooperation models the very habits that democracy requires: deliberation, compromise, and the disciplined pursuit of shared purpose.
The Coalition’s Broader Promise: Finding Strength in the Messy Middle
In time, the Coalition for the Common Good may be recognized not only for its financial and academic innovation but also for its civic contribution. It charts a structural path through the messy middle—that dynamic, necessary space between mission and market, idealism and pragmatism, independence and interdependence. The messy middle is not a zone of confusion or compromise but of disciplined discernment, where institutions learn to navigate competing goods, recalibrate as conditions shift, and resist the easy default of either/or thinking.
By aligning governance, operations, and academics around a shared commitment to equity and public purpose, the CCG shows that progress often begins in this dynamic middle ground—one rarely divided into neat halves. It is the constantly negotiated space where values meet viability and collaboration becomes a disciplined practice, not a concession.
The Coalition’s founders understood that universities should not merely study but meet—in real time and real practice—the urgent challenges of their time. Through the CCG, they propose a model in which collaboration itself becomes an act of democratic engagement—a practical, hopeful way to win “some victory for humanity” in the decades ahead.
