A growing number of financially strained small colleges are using course‑sharing consortia to expand program offerings, reduce instructional costs and keep students on track to graduate. Adrian College’s participation in a course‑sharing consortium enabled the school to launch dozens of new majors while cutting academic costs by roughly 13%, the college reported. Course‑sharing lets institutions pool enrollment around specialized courses, maintain small class sizes and avoid layoffs while increasing curricular access. Advocates say the model supports degree completion by removing scheduling bottlenecks and offering off‑cycle or low‑demand courses that would be unaffordable for a single campus. Systems and consortia leaders note implementation challenges—credit transfer, faculty workload agreements and financial settlement mechanisms—but argue course‑sharing is a scalable response to demographic declines and fiscal stress across tuition‑dependent colleges.