What Is an Educational Cooperative? Understanding Modern Procurement Partnerships

Higher education procurement teams face increasing complexity. Budgets are under pressure, compliance requirements continue to expand, and many offices operate with lean staff. In this environment, everyone is looking for ways to stretch resources, improve efficiency, and maintain strong governance.

The term educational cooperative appears often in these conversations, but it can mean two very different things. In one context, it refers to student work and learning programs. In another, it refers to cooperative purchasing organizations that support institutional procurement. While procurement professionals know the difference between the cooperative education definition and cooperatives in procurement, educators may not. So, when you’re trying to get buy-in to procurement strategies at the department level, you may want to make sure everyone’s talking about the same thing.

What Is Cooperative Education?

In many academic settings, the answer to what is cooperative education is grounded in student learning. Cooperative education programs give students the opportunity to alternate between classroom study and work, designed to integrate academic learning with real-world experience.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) reports that more than 50% of its members offer co-op education opportunities. Participation varies at different colleges and universities, though. At Drexel University, for example, 91% of undergraduate students across 75 majors take advantage of coop education opportunities.

The Benefits of Cooperative Education for Students

The cooperative education definition includes strong benefits for students, institutions, and employers:

• Students: Acquire paid, hands-on experience, so they can show relevant work history on their resumes and often get hired by employers who participate in co-op education programs.
• Institutions: Strengthen their relationships with employers, with improved hire rates for graduates to help attract new students.
• Employers: Get access to emerging talent in a low-risk environment that reduces the risk when hiring.

Educational Cooperatives in Procurement

By contrast, educational cooperatives in procurement bring together schools, colleges, and universities to improve how they source goods and services.

Instead of each institution running its own bid processes and supplier negotiations, an educational cooperative aggregates purchasing power, conducts competitive RFPs, and puts competitively awarded contracts in place for members to use. Within the cooperative, institutions maintain full control over what they buy and which suppliers they use, but they benefit from the bulk buying power of multiple organizations. For example, E&I Cooperative Services leverages the demand from more than 6,000 institutions to achieve significant volume discounts.

How Cooperative Procurement Works

Although each cooperative is structured differently, most follow a similar model:

1. Institutions join the cooperative as members.
2. The cooperative aggregates member demand and identifies priority categories such as technology, facilities, scientific supplies, or professional services.
3. The cooperative issues competitive solicitations and evaluates responses based on defined criteria such as price, quality, service, and compliance.
4. Contracts are awarded to selected suppliers and made available to members.
5. Member institutions purchase directly from those suppliers under the pre-negotiated terms.

For procurement teams, this model reduces administrative overhead and shortens sourcing timelines while also saving money.

The Value of Educational Cooperatives

With today’s budget constraints, uncertain enrollment and funding, and rising costs, cooperative purchasing has become more important than ever in managing costs and finding savings. Here are some of the key ways cooperative purchasing provides significant value.

Reducing Operational Complexity

Developing and managing RFPs is complex and time-consuming. There’s the time to put together the specification, solicit bids, and answer questions. Then, you have to score bids and evaluate suppliers based on your matrix. It can take months.

Cooperative contracts remove much of this burden because the competitive process has already been completed. E&I, for example, has more than 200 competitively solicited contracts that are ready to use and meet typical compliance requirements.

Strengthening Cost Savings and Budget Management

By aggregating spend across thousands of similar educational institutions, cooperatives typically secure better pricing and more favorable terms than schools could negotiate on their own, and savings of 10% to 15% are common.

Improving Compliance

Cooperative contracts are structured to meet the most common public procurement standards, helping you to demonstrate that sourcing decisions are transparent, competitive, and aligned with policy.

Supporting Modern Procurement Strategies

Cooperatives can be important partners in broader procurement strategies such as category management, supplier consolidation, and social initiatives. E&I Cooperative Services’ members get benefits from:

• Category management: A team of procurement professionals with deep insight into categories, who can fill in any knowledge gaps. This is particularly helpful in areas like technology, which are constantly evolving.
• Supplier consolidation: Bringing more spend under contract and consolidating suppliers using a cooperative agreement can increase volume discounts and lower your costs.
• Social initiatives: Greater access to certified diverse and suppliers that prioritize sustainability.

E&I also offers ways to uncover hidden savings, such as a no-cost Strategic Spend Assessment for members to examine your spend data and look for areas where consolidation or cooperative contracts can save you money.

When Cooperative Purchasing Creates the Most Impact

Cooperative purchasing can be valuable in almost any environment, but there are certain situations where its impact is especially strong. By partnering with a cooperative, many institutions see an almost immediate impact in scenarios like these:

• Limited staff capacity: When procurement teams are small or overstretched, cooperatives handle the heavy lifting of competitive solicitations so staff can focus on higher-value work.
• High sourcing volume: If there is a steady flow of new contract requests and time-sensitive purchases, existing cooperative contracts help teams move faster while staying compliant.
• Fragmented spend: When similar goods and services are purchased through many different suppliers, cooperatives provide a structured way to consolidate spend for better pricing and governance.
• Need for compliance assurance: Institutions that face increased audit scrutiny or changing regulations can rely on cooperative contracts that are competitively solicited and documented.
• Urgent or unplanned needs: When departments have immediate needs, and there is no time to run a full RFP, cooperative contracts offer ready-made, compliant options.

E&I Cooperative Services is the nation’s only member-owned nonprofit sourcing cooperative focused exclusively on education. Learn about all the benefits of membership, including access to the edPro Hub community where you can connect, share knowledge, and collaborate with other procurement professionals.