Cooperative relationships among urban colleges and universities and their educational collaboration with governmental, cultural, and business institutions in the city are addressed. An article by Larry Rose suggests that institutional self-interest plays a central role in encouraging educational collaboration. Four programs are described that help to indicate why city institutions are cooperating as well as what it takes to make that cooperation work. PRIME, an acronym for Philadelphia Regional Introduction for Minorities in Engineering, is a successful collaboration between 33 local industries and government agencies, the Philadelphia and Camden public schools, and four universities. This consortium manages institutional relationships through an autonomous coordinating unit. BECA, the Brooklyn Educational and Cultural Alliance, is a consortium of the borough's five independent postsecondary institutions and five of its major cultural organizations. This consortium also has a coordinating unit separate from the participating institutions. In Jersey City, the Jersey City State College and the public schools cooperated in establishing the Alternative Teacher Training Program (ATTP), a five-semester, totally field-based, preservice training program in the inner city elementary schools. The chief differences between ATTP and the college's traditional program are the amount of time students spend interning, the curricular emphasis on understanding the needs of inner city children, and the use of a variety of teaching strategies. Oklahoma City's Community Education Consortium for Lifelong Learning is confronted by the critical issues of financing, community participation, and organizational structure. There is a widely-held view that the programs of the consortium are geared to high school students rather than community residents, since most of the programs are sponsored by the school district. (SW)