Taos, New Mexico, is one of those places that makes you remember why small businesses matter. Adobe storefronts. Family-run restaurants. Generations of the same name above the same door. So when I sat down at one of those beloved restaurants recently — a warm, unassuming place where “Christmas” refers to having red and green chili on your burrito — I noticed something new at the bottom of the menu and my bill: a 3% credit card surcharge.

After poking around the next day with a few locals, I learned something interesting that I should have already known if I had been following recent developments. They told me that the small businesses had been required to “eat” or absorb the fee for years. Only recently were they “allowed” to pass the fee along as a separate charge.

That word — allowed — was curious. Since when does a small business owner in America need permission to know what something costs, and to charge accordingly?

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Ending a multi-year permission slip

The answer traces back to a federal antitrust case filed in 2005. For two decades, Visa and Mastercard — and the banks that issue cards bearing their logos — were sued by merchants who argued the card networks had essentially conspired to fix interchange fees while prohibiting merchants from passing those costs to consumers or steering them toward cheaper payment options.

The marathon class action began in 2005 when merchants sued Visa and Mastercard over alleged antitrust violations around the interchange rates that retailers, restaurateurs, and other merchants pay when they accept credit card payments. The case ground through the courts for nearly twenty years before producing a settlement that finally, among other things, gave merchants the right to surcharge.

Interchange fees are the amounts businesses pay each time a customer uses a credit card, typically ranging between 2% and 4% of the transaction amount — fees set by the payment networks and collected by issuing banks. Unlike debit card transactions, which are governed in part by the Durbin Amendment, credit card interchange fees are not capped under federal law. The result was two decades of unchecked fee growth while merchants were contractually silenced — forbidden even from telling customers what it actually cost to swipe that card. For the first time, the settlement of the anti-trust lawsuit allowed changes, including passing the fee along directly to customers.

What the Taos restaurateur was doing — that 3% surcharge — wasn’t an easy business decision so much as the long-delayed exhale after the chokehold finally loosened.

Call it what it is: A tax on small business

Here is the uncomfortable truth that the antitrust complexity obscures: interchange fees function, in practice, as a private tax on commerce — one levied not by any government accountable to voters, but by a duopoly accountable only to shareholders.

Industry data indicates that Visa and Mastercard collected more than $111 billion in credit card interchange fees in 2024. Every dollar of that came from somewhere — primarily from the margins of businesses too small to negotiate their own rates. The corner bakery, that family diner in Taos, the independent bookstore. They all pay the same posted rate, while Amazon and Walmart sit across the table and cut deals.

And unlike a government tax, this one carries no democratic accountability, no revenue to fund roads or schools, and no public debate about the rate. It is a toll booth erected in the middle of every transaction in America, and the toll goes straight to banks and card networks.

Going back to cash isn’t the answer

An obvious rejoinder to all of this is: just go cash-only. A few restaurants in Taos have tried it. And while the romance of a cash economy has a certain appeal — no fees, no middlemen, no surcharges on the menu — the operational reality is challenging in ways that aren’t discussed enough.

Cash has to be kept somewhere. For a busy restaurant doing a Saturday dinner service, that means a safe, a system for counting, and real anxiety about what happens if someone figures out where the deposit is kept overnight. Robbery risk is not hypothetical for small merchants; it is a line item in the mental budget of every owner who has ever walked out the door with a bank bag under their arm.

Then there is employee theft, which is one of the most quietly pernicious problems in food service and retail. Cash creates bad opportunities in ways that card transactions don’t. A digital transaction leaves a record. A twenty pulled from a drawer does not. The American Restaurant Association has long flagged internal theft as one of the leading causes of small business failure in the industry, and cash-heavy environments are the most vulnerable. Surcharges and interchange fees are a burden — but so is building a culture of suspicion among your own staff.

And then there is the sheer logistics of banking cash. Someone has to count the drawer every night. Someone has to make the deposit — ideally not alone, ideally not at the same time every day. For a small operation with thin staffing, that is not a trivial ask. Every trip to the bank is time not spent on the floor, in the kitchen, or managing the hundred other fires that define small business ownership.

Cash, in short, trades one set of costs for another. The Taos restaurant owner isn’t wrong to want a better option. The surcharge is a symptom. What the economy actually needs is a third way — one that doesn’t extract like the card networks and doesn’t carry the operational weight of cash.

Europe built an off-ramp. Why can’t we?

Here is where the story gets genuinely interesting — and frustrating.

Wero is a European mobile payment system launched in July 2024 by the European Payments Initiative, built to compete with PayPal, credit cards, and similar services. It is an account-to-account payment network — meaning money moves directly between bank accounts, with no card network intermediary skimming 2-3% from every transaction. Wero eliminates card network intermediaries and lowers transaction costs, backed by a consortium of major European banks. Wero already has over 47 million registered users in Belgium, France, and Germany, has processed over €7.5 billion in transfers, and counts more than 1,100 member institutions.

The model is essentially a producer cooperative: European banks pooled resources, built shared infrastructure, and created an alternative that benefits merchants and consumers rather than extracting from them.

Credit unions already operate on a cooperative model. Credit Union Service Organizations — CUSOs — exist precisely as the vehicle for credit unions to pool resources and build shared technology and financial services. This concept of shared infrastructure is not foreign or exotic. The mission alignment is perfect: member-owned institutions building payment pathways that serve members and the small businesses that anchor their communities.

A CUSO-anchored payment network — call it a AmWero — built on the FedNow instant payment rails that the Federal Reserve launched in 2023, could theoretically offer merchants account-to-account payments at a fraction of interchange costs, embedded directly in the mobile apps of the nation’s 135 million credit union members. We are seeing a few “green shoots” of a movement with BankSocial and Payfinia.

But, what is still missing is a piece of bringing merchant locations into the family. So, why not? The honest answers are uncomfortable: fragmentation among credit unions, the complexity of achieving the critical mass needed for merchant adoption, the political and financial influence of the very card networks credit unions rely on to issue their own Visa and Mastercard-branded products, and perhaps a failure of collective imagination among movement leaders.

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The question we need to ask

The restaurateur in Taos is now passing along a fee that was always there — just hidden. That’s a small and incomplete victory. The real question is whether Americans will continue to accept a privatized tax on every transaction, or whether the cooperative financial sector will finally ask: if European institutions can build Wero, what exactly is stopping us?

The enchiladas and burritos in Taos are still worth it. The surcharge shouldn’t have to be.

About the EduPartners.news and the Ex4EDU.Report.

This publication is offered as a free-of-charge contribution by EduPartners.coop, an educational services limited cooperative association focused on transformation in higher education, in partnership with Lone Tree Academics LLC. Our services are focused on solutions for the development of institutional and program strategies, crafting engaging LearningScapes™, and developing programs of the scholarship of teaching and learning.

For more information visit www.edupartners.coop.

Lone Tree Academics LLC also provides a newsletter, Ex4EDU.report, which focuses on bigger pictures issues in higher education from the perspective of transformational quality.

Moving beyond the colonial model towards participatory entrepreneurship

Quick Summary

• Modern entrepreneurship replicates colonial patterns.

• Three colonial tools are at play in modern entrepreneurship.

• The path forward requires dismantling the hero myth, breaking information dominance, and moving beyond economic extraction.

• The cooperative model offers a powerful alternative

Let’s start with the numbers. According to Shikhar Ghosh of the well-known Harvard Business School, failure rates for startups range from 30% to 95%, depending on the metric. Somehow, high failure rates are championed as a badge of honor, with entrepreneurs just told to be resilient and bounce back. Is this really success? Or, is there another problem of an elephant in the room?

What if the entrepreneurship ecosystem isn’t just flawed—but failing by actively replicating colonial patterns of extraction and domination? Perhaps that’s the elephant in the room.

In February 2026, I presented a thought piece, “Decolonising Entrepreneurship: Toward a More Inclusive Understanding of Entrepreneurial Types and Ecosystem Design,” at the International Management Conference at ASBM University in Bhubaneswar, India. The purpose of the article was to stimulate thinking about major changes in how we think about entrepreneurship. My thesis is that modern entrepreneurship is dominated by the same practices seen in 19th-century colonialism. A better option is to move towards participatory and collegial forms of entrepreneurship.

How Modern Entrepreneurship Uses Colonial Tools

Is modern entrepreneurship, which is so venerated as the fountain of eternal value in business, little more than colonial extraction? There are some indicators that colonial practices are alive and well in the startup space.

The Hero Myth Exported to Entrepreneurship

Colonial narratives centered on heroic explorers—lone figures like Columbus or Rhodes who supposedly brought progress to “backward” lands. These myths were used to systematically erase the stories of violence against existing civilizations, collective labor, and loss of indigenous knowledge.

Modern entrepreneurship replicates the colonial pattern. The obsessive focus on individual “founder heroes” serves specific colonial functions:

• Erases collective contributions: Engineers, designers, early employees, and communities disappear from the story. Somehow, only one person is needed for complex innovation and business development.

• Ignores existing knowledge systems: Indigenous business practices, cooperatives, and non-Western entrepreneurship are dismissed as “not real entrepreneurship.”

• Naturalizes extraction: If one genius created all the value, they deserve all the rewards—even if built on public infrastructure, exploited labor, or appropriated ideas

• Delegitimizes alternatives: Community-based enterprises and collective ownership appear “less entrepreneurial.” In one meeting at the school where I completed my MBA, a Swiss banker told me that any type of collective enterprise was communist.

Just as colonial heroes supposedly brought civilization to empty lands (terra nullius), entrepreneurial heroes supposedly create value from nothing, erasing all the collective infrastructure, knowledge, and labor that makes their ventures possible.

The Entrepreneurship Press: Information Dominance

Colonial powers understood that controlling information meant controlling perceptions of reality. They established publishing houses, determined what counted as “knowledge” versus “superstition,” and created educational systems that taught colonial worldviews as universal truth.

The “entrepreneurship press” functions today to control images and ideas. Business media, startup publications, accelerators, and business schools operate as a modern information dominance system that determines:

• What counts as “real” entrepreneurship: Venture-backed tech startups are entrepreneurship; a family restaurant is just a “small business.”

• Which metrics matter: Funding rounds and unicorn valuations are legitimate measures; community impact and sustainability are “soft” or irrelevant.

• Whose stories get told: Silicon Valley founders dominate coverage; Global South entrepreneurs, women, and people of color remain invisible.

• What knowledge is legitimate: MBAs focused on ideas like monetization are seen as following “best practices”; traditional business wisdom is seen as backward.

Such information control operates through media coverage that amplifies certain stories, educational curricula that teach Silicon Valley models as universal, and accelerator programs that impose standardized frameworks regardless of context.

The colonial parallel: Just as colonial education taught that European knowledge was superior, the entrepreneurship press teaches that venture capital models are the only legitimate path—regardless of cultural context or community needs.

Economic Extraction with Funding and Property Mechanisms

Colonial economic systems extracted wealth from colonized territories through resource seizure, unequal trade, property appropriation, debt bondage, and sometimes slavery.

Venture capital replicates these mechanisms. It isn’t individual bad actors, but structural design. This results are:

• Venture capital as resource extraction—VCs invest in emerging markets or underserved communities, extract value through exits, and concentrate wealth with distant investors rather than communities where value was created. A significant part of the funding often comes from public sources, which are then turned to private gain.

• Intellectual property as land seizure—Just as colonizers claimed communal lands as private property, IP regimes privatize collective knowledge. Traditional practices and community innovations get patented by outsiders; communities receive nothing while patent holders extract rents forever.

• Funding as bondage—Venture structures force entrepreneurs to prioritize investor returns over community benefit. Even “founder-friendly” terms require exponential growth and rapid exit. Alternative models—cooperatives, community ownership, slow growth—become impossible once VC-funding enters the scene.

• A geography mirroring colonialism—Venture capital is concentrated in a few wealthy cities (San Francisco, New York, London). Often, however, entrepreneurs are recruited into funding models from lower-cost geographies, yielding what is known as location arbitrage.

• Exits as extraction—Portfolio economics require VCs to push for exits regardless of founder or community preferences. Successful companies must be sold to larger corporations or taken public and often removed geographically. Local ownership is systematically eliminated, and wealth leaves communities permanently.

Colonial System Tools in Entrepreneurship

These three tools reinforce each other:

1. The hero myth makes extraction appear deserved (”they created all the value”)

2. Information dominance makes the system appear natural (”this is just how entrepreneurship works”)

3. Economic extraction concentrates wealth and power (”success” means enriching distant investors)

This setup tends to sideline most global entrepreneurs—think lifestyle businesses, social ventures, co-ops, indigenous, and community-focused efforts—and it pulls wealth out, concentrating it in a few well-off hubs.

Decolonizing Entrepreneurship—The Way Forward

In my article, I proposed three key action areas.

Dismantle the hero myth: Highlight teams and collective contributions; promote and support cooperatives and community-owned enterprises; recognize indigenous entrepreneurship practices; challenge case studies that erase collective labor.

Break information dominance: Create alternative media for diverse entrepreneurship stories; develop pluralistic success metrics; avoid marginalizing quiet voices; legitimize diverse knowledge systems; challenge the universality of Silicon Valley frameworks, such as monetization.

Move beyond economic extraction: Develop community-owned funding mechanisms; support patient capital without extraction through exits; protect communal knowledge from IP privatization; create cooperative ownership structures; design funding that keeps wealth circulating locally.

Defining Who is Served

To move forward, we must answer a fundamental question: Who does the entrepreneurship ecosystem serve?

If it serves wealthy investors extracting value from communities worldwide—we have a colonial system.

If it serves diverse entrepreneurs building sustainable value in their communities—we have a decolonized alternative.

The dominant narrative isn’t neutral or natural. It’s a set of colonial tools that concentrates wealth while marginalizing the majority of entrepreneurs worldwide.

Decolonizing entrepreneurship means recognizing these tools, resisting their logic, and building alternatives that already exist in cooperative movements, indigenous economies, and community enterprises around the world.

The choice is ours: Continue replicating colonial patterns, or build truly inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystems that serve communities rather than extracting from them.

The Cooperative Alternative: A Promising Decolonization Model

Cooperatives offer a powerful, time-tested alternative to colonial patterns of entrepreneurship. With over 3 million cooperatives serving more than 1 billion members worldwide, the cooperative model directly counters each colonial tool.

• Dispelling the hero myth. Cooperatives are inherently collective, with democratic governance and shared ownership. There is no single founder-hero; success belongs to the community of member-owners who build the enterprise together.

• Moving beyond information dominance, Cooperative movements maintain their own knowledge systems, educational networks, and success metrics based on member benefit rather than investor returns. The International Cooperative Alliance’s principles provide an alternative framework to Silicon Valley orthodoxy.

• Share the wealth. Cooperatives are designed to keep wealth circulating within communities. Profits are distributed to member-owners or reinvested locally, not extracted to distant investors. There are no exits—cooperatives exist to serve members indefinitely, not to enrich outside capital.

From Mondragon Corporation in Spain (employing 80,000+ worker-owners) to credit unions serving millions globally, cooperatives demonstrate that entrepreneurship can build community wealth rather than extract it. For those committed to decolonizing entrepreneurship, cooperatives aren’t just an alternative—they’re a proven path forward.

About the Research

Gilbert, D.J. (2026, Feb. 7). “Decolonising Entrepreneurship: Toward a More Inclusive Understanding of Entrepreneurial Types and Ecosystem Design.” Presented at IMCON 2026, ASBM University, India. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/401675504_From_Pitch_Decks_to_People_De-Colonising_Entrepreneurship_Beyond_Capital_and_Code

Tags: #DecolonizingEntrepreneurship #ColonialismInBusiness #CooperativeEconomics #SolidarityEconomy #ExtractiveCapitalism #AlternativeEconomies

About the EduPartners.news and the Ex4EDU.Report.

This publication is offered as a free-of-charge by EduPartners.coop, an educational services limited cooperative association focused on transformation in higher education, in partnership with Lone Tree Academics LLC. Our services focus on solutions for the development of institutional and program strategies, crafting engaging LearningScapes™, and developing programs in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

For more information visit www.edupartners.coop.

Lone Tree Academics LLC also provides a newsletter, Ex4EDU.report, which focuses on bigger picture issues in higher education from the perspective of transformational quality.

For more information ,visit www.edupartners.coop and www.ltacademics.com

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In a recent article in Higher Ed Dive, Richard Azziz asked, “Why is the higher education sector so fragile in the US?” The article revealed substantial fragility not only in the U.S. but also in the European higher education sector.

The closure and merger of smaller institutions under 1000 students appears to be accelerating. Even larger, state-funded institutions are slashing programs in the face of declining enrollment. The causes vary but are often related to offering in-person programs in remote and sparsely-populated geographies, demographic shifts to smaller age cohorts—the so-called “Demographic Cliff,” misplaced facility investments, and a growing preference for shorter, less expensive micro-credentials. 

The common path taken in many of these situations resembles that of the corporate world. Solutions typically include closing institutions, merging with another institution, or slashing programs and staff. We should ask, however, if there might be a better way to create a shared model through edu-coops. 

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Where can we share?

An edu-coop solution may offer a way forward for many institutions. Based on experience typical of mergers, restructurings, and acquisitions, several promising alternatives emerge. 

Strategic sharing of capabilities through an edu-coop may be a solution

The diagram below shows a useful framework, which is a mix of elements, including assets, people, processes, technologies, and new markets. The framework can be used to think about sharing options based on the type of opportunity and the ability to generate synergies.

Assets An all-too-common default by higher education institutions in trouble is to look for a way out of failed asset decisions. That wonderful sports facility, performing arts auditorium, or lazy river recreation center of past capital campaigns can suddenly seem like a millstone around the neck of an institution. The decisions in these areas can be hard and may often represent the abandonment of what was seen as a prized possession only a few years ago. These decisions can essentially be about how to deal with brownfield assets.

People, process, technology. These three areas should be examined holistically rather than in isolation. Some issues to avoid include the following.

• Institutions trying to solve an enrollment shortfall by paring back on faculty and staff may find that they have entered a downward spiral of declining capability and customer satisfaction. 

• Many institutions have leaned into process consolidation through outsourcing or shared services only to find that the process took too long and delivered too little. 

• Chasing shiny objects of technology, often hoping that online courses will save the day, disappoints more often than not. 

The three areas must work in harmony. Yet, achieving this harmony can be evasive to smaller institutions operating alone, and that is where innovative edu-coop sharing can work.

New markets.  The embrace of an edu-coop to address significant issues can and should include a focus on new markets and new ways to offer education. 

Can this work?

The model of small credit unions using supporting shared organizations called credit union service organizations (CUSOs") provides a model. CUSOs are not per se cooperatives but are owned by credit unions.

According to data from the NCUA, there were over 1,000 CUSOs in 2021, offering a range of services, including Investments, IT, lending, member service operations, and payments. Customer credit unions own CUSOs, ensuring that services are needed and appropriate. The availability of CUSO services ensures that even smaller credit unions have access to advanced technology and services.

The edu-coop could be set up to follow many elements of the CUSO model. That could lead us to ask why not use a similar model in higher education.

Share your thoughts in the poll below.

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Past posts that you may want to read

About the EduPartners.news, the Ex4EDU.Report, and the Student360.Report

This publication is offered as a free-of-charge contribution by EduPartners.coop, an educational services limited cooperative association focused on transformation in higher education. Our services are focused on solutions for the development of institutional and program strategies, crafting engaging LearningScapes™, and developing programs of the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Lone Tree Academics LLC and EduPartner.Solutions also provide a newsletter, Ex4EDU.report, which focuses on bigger pictures issues in higher education from the perspective of transformational quality.

Another related report is the Student360.Report, which focuses on more granular topics of educational design and delivery. It also is offered as a free-of-charge contribution.

For more information visit www.edupartners.coop.

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Given the success of the major for-profit online universities such as the University of Phoenix, Southern New Hampshire University, Grand Canyon University, Kaplan, etc., the attractiveness of expanded enrollment and revenue from online drew many institutions into the game. Many quickly found that offering online courses is not just purchasing a learning management system and letting faculty populate courses. Being successful at online education requires a range of support and operational elements that many higher education institutions lacked. 

Enter the OPM

Thus, a new type of service provider--online program managers or OPMs--was created to fill the gap. 2U was one of the early for-profit OPM companies. According to Unbound, five vendors—Pearson, 2U, Wiley, Academic Partnership, and Bisk/University Alliance—have commanded the lion’s share of the OPM market at its peak.

In late July 2024, 2U entered into Chapter 11 bankruptcy—a reorganization—in the United States. 2U grew to be one of the largest online program manager (OPM)  companies, reporting 2023 revenues of $255 million with EBITDA of $90.2 million representing a margin of 35%.  At the time of the bankruptcy, however, 2U was reported to own clients over $20 million.

But, 2U is not alone in its struggles. The entire OPM model is now one of questionable viability. As reported by Inside Higher Ed, by 2023 the sector was ripe for a shakeout amid issues of mismatches of value propositions with institutional needs and regulatory challenges.

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So what went wrong?

Prior to the pandemic, many higher education institutions sensed that a path to survival and growth was to offer more degree programs online. The growth in online offerings had been nothing short of spectacular since the late 1980s with the likes of the University of Phoenix reaching in excess of 450,000 students at its peak. Many institutions looked to online as an easy solution to stalling growth with on-campus programs but lacked the technical skills to deliver marketable programs at scale.

OPMs were touted as a pathway to open online enrollments to traditional, campus-based programs. But, as illustrated by the latest case of 2U’s bankruptcy, things did not work out. 

Although the post-mortem on the OPM sector is still being written, it is fairly clear that there was a collision of for-profit growth business models in most OPM operations with the realities of higher education. Injecting an OPM for-profit model of perpetual year-on-year revenue growth with demands of high profitability into a higher education sector posting declining enrollments since 2010 was never a recipe for success. 

The irony of the OPM shakeout is that there still is a significant need to support many higher educational institutions for assistance in delivering online education and next-generation certificate programs. Higher education is transitioning from place-based degree programs to a world where micro-credentials and stackable degree programs delivered through hybrid technologies are the norm. Given this shift, the need to be on top of the needed marketing, student support, and delivery tools, technologies, and skills is even more pressing for many of the institutions served by OPMs. 

One could then ask about how to create an alternative to the for-profit OPM model to meet this need. Modern cooperatives may just provide the needed approach.

Could an education management cooperative (EduMgtCoop) be a better way?

So, what solutions might exist for institutions unable to handle the challenges of ever more complex learning pathways, technologies, and support needs? 

One model could be a modern cooperative in the form of a limited cooperative association or LCA. Unlike familiar consumer cooperatives such as credit unions or cooperative grocers, the LCA provides flexibility to develop an organization that can meet the challenges.

The limited cooperative association or LCA is a new model that offers promise for higher education

A defining difference between the LCA and historical cooperatives is the ability to define different classes of members with different voting, governance, and economic participation roles and rights. The model has been supported in the U.S. with the Uniform Law Commission and the Uniform Limited Cooperative Association Act. The Commission's website lists nine states that have adopted the ULCA provisions.  California also permits LCAs under its own legislation.

The flexibility in the LCA organizational structure would allow a range of options to support institutions joining a cooperative. These options could leverage the different types or classes of members allowed in the LCA.

Producer, worker, and investor cooperative member classes are key to the flexibility of the LCA

One class could be a “producer” class of institutions wanting to pool resources for the acquisition, management, and sharing of key technologies such as student information systems, learning management systems, and other backbone operating systems. The producers could also share marketing assets and systems. The producers would have a voting structure specific to their class of membership.

Another member class for the LCA could be a “worker” class.  In addition to faculty, this class could include support personnel such as recruiters, curriculum and instruction designers, and some administrative positions. This class would have voting rights within its class of worker-owners.

The final cooperative member class, and perhaps the key differentiator of the LCA, is the “investor” class.  Unlike historical models of cooperatives, the LCA model permits direct investment by third parties. The investors belong to a separate class and typically do not have voting rights in cooperative governance. Their rights and potential returns are determined by investment contracts.

The investors in LCAs should be more of the nature of social investors aligned to the seven cooperative principles serving as core values for the coop as well as investors. The model will not be attractive to investors focused solely on extracting high returns from an investment. A solid co-op business model can generate a reasonable rate of return but not a 3-year, 300% return, which is all too frequent with venture investors.

Modern complex business models require up-front investment. Cooperatives often fail or cannot scale due to lack of investment. The LCA can solve this problem in a way that is consistent with cooperative principles rather than extractive for-profit investment ideas.

The LCA enables an umbrella coop structure. This novel structure provides plenty of room for creativity in fashioning an organization.

Will an EduMgtCoop LCA actually work?

Existing cooperative or shared services offerings to higher education institutions clearly confirm that an EduMgtCoop LCA can work well. As an example, Minnesota has used service cooperatives in the Minnesota Service Cooperative structures to support K-12 school districts since 1967. The model, which has evolved over time, provides a range of services to schools that might be out of reach to smaller school districts. The services offered are those requested by the members, which is very much in line with the cooperative principles of member control.

Edge (formerly NJ Edge) operates a member-owned consortium for a range of technology services for owners including colleges and universities. This type of consortium model is one that has emerged for certain specific support areas. One key difference to the LCA model is that, generally, consortium members will avoid competing with one another. A consortium could be problematic if, for example, two members wished to compete for the same students or share faculty. Within coop structures competition among members is far less of an issue or problem.

An interesting emerging model from Europe is Woolf.University. Woolf holds itself out at a “collegiate university.” The offerings appear to be a technology and academic quality consortium. The model appears to fall short of the wide range of options available in an LCA structure. In particular, the distinction between classes and types of members is not clearly defined.

The last example, and one well worth mentioning, is Mondragon University in Spain. Mondragon is a consortium university formed in 1997 as a combination of three faculty cooperatives, Faculties of Engineering, Business Studies, and Humanities and Education Sciences. A fourth faculty in culinary science was added in 2011. Mondragon has been able to leverage the very flexible cooperative law in Spain. It provides perhaps the closest model to an LCA operating as an EduMgtCoop. It has survived, grown, and thrived for over 15 years and clearly demonstrates the viability of a coop model in higher education.

A call to action

The potential demise of the OPM model presents an opportunity to rethink ways to work together to share resources in areas of critical need and resource scarcity. Forming an EduMgtCoop using the flexibility of the LCA structure should be seen as a major opportunity.

Several existing models validate that collaborative models of organization such as consortia and coop structures can address the critical needs of institutions in areas such as recruiting, technology, and staffing. Perhaps its time to develop such an entity.

The work of EduPartners.coop includes developing market analysis and business models for an EduMgtCoop. We would welcome the opportunity to form and seek funding for a working group to explore the potential of an LCA. Please feel free to contact us 

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About the EduPartners.news, the Ex4EDU.Report, and the Student360.Report

This publication is offered as a free-of-charge contribution by EduPartners.coop, an educational services limited cooperative association focused on transformation in higher education. Our services are focused on solutions for the development of institutional and program strategies, crafting engaging LearningScapes™, and developing programs of the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Lone Tree Academics LLC and EduPartner.Solutions also provide a newsletter, Ex4EDU.report, which focuses on bigger pictures issues in higher education from the perspective of transformational quality.

Another related report is the Student360.Report, which focuses on more granular topics of educational design and delivery. It also is offered as a free-of-charge contribution.

For more information visit www.edupartners.coop.

Share EduPartners.coop

EduPartners.coop LCA was incorporated in Colorado on International Labor Day 2023 as a limited cooperative association.

We have taken a few months to shape the details of the organization with the help of the Center for Community Wealth Building in Denver and several thought partners. 

We are now ready to go live and look for supporters and members.

Why a cooperative?

Higher education is a key sector of our societies, supporting the advancement of knowledge and economic development. Education is, at its core, a collaborative endeavor. By embracing a cooperative, we believe education, particularly higher education, must embrace a less hierarchical approach to delivering education.

Cooperatives, particularly worker-owned cooperatives, provide a unique avenue to further the mission of higher education by embracing a unique collaborative approach. The cooperative principles distinguish service and product delivery by a co-op. The principles are fully elaborated by the International Cooperative Alliance and are listed below.

1. Open and Voluntary Membership

2. Democratic Member Control

3. Members’ Economic Participation

4. Autonomy and Independence

5. Education, Training, and Information

6. Cooperation Among Cooperatives

7. Concern for Community

The co-op difference will be further discussed in the next several installments of the EduPartners.news. The remainder of this post will begin that discussion by describing the key tenets of how we have set up the co-op and the directions we will take in developing the organization.

What are the services of EduPartners.coop?

The focus of the cooperative is on providing services in the following areas:

• Market studies/strategies--Helping educational providers focus on the high-impact areas and markets.

• LearningScapes™--Supporting the skillful design of curriculum, skilled delivery through learning interactions, and meaningful assessment/evaluation. Future efforts are planned to include curriculum exchange among members and institutions.

• Sponsored research projects--Developing and supporting research teams in multiple education-related areas, especially in topics focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning.

• Performance excellence--Supporting and catalyzing excellence certification and accreditation.

Who are the members?

As a hybrid cooperative, EduPartners.coop leverages the flexibility of the limited cooperative association to address the challenges and realities of higher education in a dynamic period. The hybrid nature of the cooperative is reflected in having three types or classes of members: customer members, worker members, and investors. 

Customer members — “Edu-collaborators”

Edu-collaborators are customer members served through informational products and services. Most co-ops are customer-based models so the idea of customers as members with voting rights is often familiar. The current informational product is based on this Substack blog produced on a bi-weekly schedule--EduPartners.news. Although the Substack is free to all who subscribe, becoming a customer member requires an annual paid or founding subscription of the EduPartners Substack. In recognition of their support, customer members will receive additional services beyond the Substack posts. 

EduPartners.news will be a key product for customer members

The membership remains in effect as long as there is a Substack subscription. Voting rights are afforded to this member class in several areas including the nature and shape of the types of offerings. In recognition of their support, customer members will receive additional services beyond the Substack posts. 

Worker members

Worker members are individuals or organizations who provide services to clients or customers on behalf of the co-op. Worker members may include higher education institutions, training groups, educational services companies, coaches, or facilitators.

Worker members serve the important role of providing co-op services to clients

The key is that there is a clear link to excellence in higher education or organizational learning and development. Individuals or organizations wishing to join as a worker member must first complete a client engagement on behalf of the cooperative or a project benefitting the cooperative. The one-member, one-vote rule of co-ops, still applies to organizational worker members. The board of directors is elected primarily from this membership class.

Investor members

Investors represent a relatively new and innovative type of member for cooperatives. A consistent barrier for cooperatives has been the need for adequate investment capital to start and grow a modern business.  The limited cooperative association (LCA) model allows us to address those challenges by seeking investors aligned with cooperative principles, ideals, and norms.

The focus for investor members is focused on supporting the co-op’s mission rather than extractive return on investment.

Investment in an LCA avoids the extractive model often seen in startups, where investors seek to “extract” value from founders in exchange for the dream of making it big. In contrast to most venture capital, investors in an LCA do not share in governance. The one-member, one-vote process is reserved for other classes of members. 

How is the cooperative governed and managed?

Worker cooperatives are governed by a board of directors chosen from worker members and elected during an annual meeting of members. Directors serve fixed, multi-year terms set out in the bylaws.

The day-to-day management of EduPartners.coop will be carried out using Sociocracy. The techniques were first developed as the Sociocratic Circle Method by Gerard Endenburg in the Netherlands in the 1980s.  The method has spread extensively throughout Europe and in the U.S. and provides a unique way to govern operations and service delivery.

Sociocracy is a highly participative and scalable method of governance

The foundations of the approach involve the use of small groups, called circles, which are focused on a particular aspect of managing and operating the organization. For example, a governance circle may focus on governance issues, a marketing circle on marketing and sales, and a service delivery circle on managing service offerings.

The circle structure will emerge and evolve as EduPartners.coop adds members and services. Initially, the co-op will function in startup mode with just a general circle

For further information, check out Sociocracy for All, which has one of the most complete, usable, and clear descriptions.

How can one become a customer member?

Becoming a customer member is easy. Just sign up and subscribe for the paid membership of this Substack and you will be a customer member.

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How can one become a worker member?

For those wishing to join as a worker member, the membership options include individuals and partner organizations providing services in the higher education sector. Services can include teaching, research, consulting, evaluation, assessment, facilitation, mentoring, or any similar type of activity. 

A prospective worker member must first complete a project with the cooperative. Those projects include services delivered to a client on behalf of EduPartners.coop or providing services to the cooperative. After the conclusion of the project, the candidate member is evaluated by the board and/or other members for full worker membership.

Individual worker members can be carried in the name of an individual or a dedicated company such as a solopreneur LLC or limited company respecting the one member, one vote cooperative principle.

Investor members

Investor members can join either through a cash or in-kind investment. Each investor member will have a customized membership contract. Investor members do not have the voting rights of the worker members. Investor member's rights and responsibilities are governed specifically by the investment contract. 

Is membership available to those outside the U.S.?

Yes. We have identified two approaches for non-U.S. individuals to join as work members. Request details if interested.

Interested in knowing more?

If you are interested in knowing more, working with us, joining as a worker member, or discussing options, contact us through our website EduPartners.coop. 

About the EduPartners.coop Substack

This report is offered in both a free and paid version. Annual paid subscriptions to this Substack entitle the subscriber to a customer membership.

For more information visit www.edupartners.coop.

Please also consider subscribing to our related newsletters — Ex4Edu.Report and Student360.Report — in support of the navigation of the changing world of higher education.

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EduPartners.coop was incorporated on May 1, 2023, as a limited cooperative association in Colorado. The cooperative project is an effort to approach learning and education differently—by explicitly working together at multiple levels in new ways. This Substack will serve both as a place to learn more about his project and be a member.

As we begin, we will have only one free level for subscribers. Your voluntary support of our work is greatly appreciated—either through donation or simply sharing this Substack with others. As we grow, our intent is to introduce a paid tier with additional depth such as guest authors and lectures.

Sign up now and learn more.

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