Dive Brief:

• Carnegie Mellon University last week announced a new partnership with the Pittsburgh International Airport, which will allow faculty and students to research and integrate innovative traveler assistance technologies and programs throughout the facility. 
• In a release, officials from both the Allegheny County Airport Authority and the university praised the partnership as a relationship that would help the airport to reflect the diversity of its customer base while enhancing the airport's brand as a major transportation hub. 
• The new partnership is an extension of an existing relationship between the university and the airport, which has seen students creating apps which help flight passengers more easily find parking and has led to improvements for mobility or vision impaired passengers to access the facility and services. 

Dive Insight:

This is an ideal example of collegiate-industrial relationships which can create positive press, tangible improvements, and workforce development all out of a few strategic objectives. Whether its Ball State University positioning to take over a struggling secondary school district, over Appalachian colleges and universities closing gaps in poverty and educational attainment in collaboration with private companies, higher education is the one industry that usually thrives off of mutual interests and partnerships with other large companies. 

Partnerships which help to yield more revenue, or to reduce taxpayer spending are the kinds of relationships lawmakers are most likely to support. And with the future of public higher education being retracted to large state institutions cannibalizing smaller institutions, even those within their own system, institutions of all sizes and types will need to be more conscious of these kinds of collaborations to survive aggressive budget cuts and merger proposals.