The Committee on Institutional Cooperation and Five Colleges, Inc., along with the Claremont Consortium are among the oldest and most successful higher education consortia in the United States. The Committee on Institutional Cooperation includes the members of the Big Ten athletic conference plus the University of Chicago. The participants in Five Colleges, Inc. are: Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Another example of a successful consortium is the Five Colleges of Ohio of Ohio: Oberlin College, Ohio Wesleyan University, Kenyon College, College of Wooster and Denison University. The aforementioned Claremont Consortium (known as the Claremont Colleges) consists of Pomona College, Scripps College, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, Pitzer College, and the Keck Graduate Institute. These consortia have pooled the resources of their member colleges and the universities to share human and material assets as well as to link academic and administrative resources.
An example of a non-profit consortium is the Appalachian College Association located in Berea, Kentucky. The association consists of 36 private liberal arts colleges and universities spread across the central Appalachian mountains in Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Collectively these higher education institutions serve approximately 42,500 students. Six research universities in the region (University of Kentucky, University of North Carolina, University of Tennessee, West Virginia University, University of Virginia, and Virginia Tech) are affiliated with the ACA. These institutions assist the ACA in reviewing grant and fellowship applications, conducting workshops, and providing technical assistance. The ACA works to serve higher education in the rural regions of these five states.